


Pulled Paper Thin

by DocWitchery



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Always Female Oliver, F/M, POV Alternating, Sibling Bonding, Slow Build, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 06:54:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1541669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DocWitchery/pseuds/DocWitchery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Olivia Queen, billionaire heiress and notorious party-girl, returns to Starling City after being shipwrecked on an island for five years.</p>
<p>A lot of things haven't changed. But a lot will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a little nervous about sharing this because this is my first time writing fan fiction in awhile, and my first time ever posting it online. Comments would be very much appreciated, and any critique you have to offer would be great!
> 
> I have a lot of plans for this, though I can't say for sure how often I'll be able to update. In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy!

It’s while she’s sitting in Beijing Capital International Airport staring at the crinkled, fingerprint-stained airline ticket gripped tightly in her hands that Olivia Queen realizes she is really, truly alone.

It doesn’t really matter that she’s surrounded by people, choking in them, fellow travelers babbling away in the seat beside hers, new arrivals bustling about, going through motions that she barely even recognizes anymore, announcements blasting over the speakers in Mandarin. It doesn’t matter that in less than twenty four hours she’ll be back in Starling City, back in the arms of her mother and sister, the two of them self-assured in the knowledge that the third Queen woman managed to waltz back out of hell.

Because in a lot of ways, she didn’t.

She thinks she came back a lot like this piece of paper, damaged and stained, but disguised expertly by delicate folding and colorful ink layered over the front. It, like herself, is a representation of a journey: one she is still undertaking. Only just beginning, actually.

Literature was never really her cup of tea, the Odyssey notwithstanding, and five years without books hasn’t helped with that, but she thinks maybe that was a little bit poetic.

\--

_“Why are we doing this again?” Olivia complained. They’d been at this for days now, and she was getting a little tired of being terrified, of having a knife jammed to her throat or a gun shoved in her face. Realistically, she understood why this was necessary, that Slade had to be cruel in order to be kind, but that didn’t stop the little spike of resentment bubbling up beneath her breast. She thrust her bamboo stick point down like a stake in the dirt, where it wobbled once and stayed stuck. “Because it’s not sinking in. Any of it.”_

_“I told you. I can’t be rushing to save your little damsel ass every five seconds,” Slade said, tossing his own piece of bamboo aside, “Leaving you untrained is going to get us both killed.”_

_“Well I still don’t think hitting people with sticks is going to intimidate anybody,” Olivia mumbled._

_“Yeah?” he asked. He reached over his head to retrieve one of his blades from its sheathe on his back and held it out to her, one brow raised. “Think you can handle the real thing, then?”_

_She took it from him, her arm trembling a little from the weight. “Um.”_

_His expression was smug. “Didn’t think so.” He reached for his other sword and took a couple practice swings at the air. “My favorites, these. Custom made. Couldn’t imagine being stranded here without ‘em.”_

_“Not sure I see the appeal,” Olivia said lightly, handing the first sword back._

_“You don’t feel it?” His grin was manic. “The swing and clash of steel, singing in your veins…”_

_“Mm, no, can’t say I do.”_

_“You’ve got no sense of poetry,” Slade grunted._

_“Neither do you,” Olivia pointed out, “you just like stabbing things.”_

_Slade cocked his head to one side slightly before nodding in acquiescence. “True.” He sheathed both swords in one smooth movement, his shoulders rolling with the motion. Then he released the clasps on the straps and let the weapons slip from his back. They hit the ground with a soft thud. Her eyes met his and just for a moment it seemed like his expression lost its edge, like something in his dark eyes softened imperceptibly, and like this Olivia could believe he was almost human and not just an extension of the blades he wielded. Then she blinked and that moment was gone, and he was coming at her with the bamboo again. “No more slacking off.”_

\--

“Well, all things considered, Miss Queen, you’re in good health,” Doctor Lam tells her, his pen making idle marks on the clipboard in his hands. “As soon as your mother arrives, I think you’ll be good to go.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Olivia says, her voice soft. She doesn’t take her eyes away from the picture window that covers the back wall of the room. It’s a beautiful view _all sharp angles and bright lights nothing like the verdant greens and harsh grays that dominated her vision for the past five years and if she thinks about it too hard she’s there again choking on the chilling dread in the air closed in on all sides by unforgiving trees and angry men in dark masks,_ one she never really thought she’d see again, and the determination that has spent five years simmering in her stomach reaches its boiling point. She’s going to fix this city, no matter what it costs her, no matter what it already has. “Really.”

“There is one thing, though,” the doctor hesitates, his eyes pinned to one particular sheet on the clipboard. Olivia already knows which one. “Something—not unusual per se, but curious—came up in your blood work. This might be a difficult question for you to answer, but…”

“I’d appreciate it,” Olivia says slowly, turning to face him, “if you could keep that between us.”

The doctor frowns. “Miss Queen—”

“I’m sorry, Doctor Lam, but I’m…not ready to talk about it. Not yet.”

“I…Of course,” the doctor allows, “but if you ever need an unbiased ear, I am here, and the hospital keeps an excellent counseling staff in-house.”

“Thanks,” she says, and her face almost creaks with the unfamiliarity of the smile she plasters on it. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

\--

It’s while she’s sitting in her room, scratching idly at a sketchpad with her pencil while voices from downstairs float up to her ears that Thea Queen realizes she doesn’t have to be alone anymore.

She can pick out each voice readily, has always been able to. The soft hum of Raisa’s thick accent, the bolder cadence of Walter’s, the sharp clipped tones of her mother. And in the middle of it all, a light, quiet voice that, while she’s never heard it that low, is exceedingly familiar. Even after five years.

When she hears it, she practically bolts for the stairs.

Olivia looks mostly like the picture Thea keeps on her bedside table, the one they took of the two of them on their last sisterly bonding trip to the Starling City Mall, when Thea was eleven and wanted to walk around wearing flashy dresses just like her big sister. She looks mostly like the picture, but not quite. 

Her face is a little more gaunt and etched with lines, the muscle tone of her arms a little more defined, her eyes the same shade of hazel-blue but oddly haunted and cold in a way they never used to be.

She still hugs the same, though.

\--

Her mother wasn’t lying about her room being exactly as she left it. It’s almost like she’s stepped into a time machine and she’s twenty-two again, young and reckless and over-privileged. She can tell just by looking that her stash hasn’t been moved, still in the same place hidden in the back of her desk, and Olivia resolves to burn the damn thing the minute she gets a chance.

She moves first to the bed and sets her trunk down on top of it, runs her hands over the worn, green-stained wood and twirls the lock expertly between her fingers until it snaps clean open. She lifts the lid, the hinges groaning as she does. Resting just inside the crate are the only belongings she has from the past five years. Of all the material things in this room, these are the only ones that really matter. The rest could go up in flames and she wouldn’t give a damn.

She ensures the door to her room is locked before she pulls each object out one by one and sets them in a neat line beside her pillow. The long bow is the first to fall on the mattress, its weight a welcome one in her hands, almost an extension of her own limbs.

Several small satchels of herbs follow, most of which she cultivated and harvested herself. The plants were invaluable to her during her stay on the island, and will undoubtedly be a help now. She wonders how long the stash will last. For a long moment she debates the merits of starting her own little horticulture project, and finally makes a note in the back of her mind to look into it later.

Her father’s list lands on the bed, then the hōzen she plans to give Thea. After that, all that remains in the chest is a familiar green hood, an equally-familiar scrap of gray and black fabric, a few leftover arrows, and a small jade barrette.

She picks up the latter and polishes it with her thumb, the grooves catching on her skin. Ignoring the way her breath starts coming in short, unsteady bursts, she takes a step towards the mirror.

If stepping into her room was like stepping into a time capsule this is like stepping into an alternate dimension.

Her hair is a little more presentable now that the dead ends have been cut away, to the point where it looks almost like it did before she was shipwrecked, all long golden waves _not short like it used to be hacked down to chin length using the hunting knife in the pocket of her stolen uniform because they’d notice they’d see all that hair and she had to hide she had to_ falling in a frame around her face. She pins it up the way she has for the past three years, the jade clip a welcome comfort against her scalp. The makeup goes on as easy as it used to, kohl around her eyes and color on her lips and cheeks, but it feels caked and heavy on her skin, like a lie she paints on to make the people around her feel better.

The person in the mirror is a stranger now. She used to put so much stock in appearances, strove to be the pinnacle of fashion and good breeding and everything a billionaire heiress should stand for. Got drunk and partied and slept around, but she can’t do it anymore, can’t be what everyone expects her to be, because all those little bits of her that were irresponsible and manipulative and just plain bad got scraped off, burned away by the fires of Purgatory.

In a way, she has never felt more pure.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of the comments and kudos so far! I'm glad you guys are enjoying it. :)

The first time Olivia wakes up screaming she almost kills her own mother.

The second and third times she wakes up with tear tracks down her face, the thin sheet she’d dragged down to the floor with her soaked in sweat and spit and embarrassingly enough, piss.

The fourth time, she vomits.

After the fifth time she stops sleeping much at all.

\--

_For the second night in a row the temperature dropped below freezing, frost clinging to the outside of the plane in thick sheets. For the second night in a row Olivia quaked in her cot, the thin blanket and the clothes she wore not enough to keep heat in and the chill out._

_She hadn’t much wanted to sleep, anyway. Every time she tried she just saw Sara appear beneath her lids, slipping under the water’s choppy surface again and again. One of her best friends, gone, just like that. Her father pulling the trigger, once, twice. Gone before she could blink._

_She was almost glad Laurel hadn’t been able to come with them, too focused on her LSATs, no matter how angry Olivia had gotten about it at the time. Because Laurel was still alive in Starling City, and so were Thea and Olivia’s mother and Tommy. All safe. Safe because they hadn’t had the bright idea to hop on her father’s yacht last minute._

_Safe and warm while she was not._

_“You know, I can hear your teeth chattering from over here.”_

_Olivia rolled in her cot towards the source of the voice. Slade’s eyes were dark and glittering in the low light. “Sorry. I’ll try to freeze to death a little faster for you.”_

_He made a low, grunting sound, and Olivia couldn’t see him very well but she was pretty sure he just rolled his eyes. “Get over here.”_

_She stiffened. “What?”_

_He lifted up the edge of his own covers and shook it at her in what she thought he intended as a welcoming gesture. It fell a little short of the mark. “Get over here and we’ll share body heat.”_

_She raised an eyebrow at him. “Didn’t know you felt that way, Slade.”_

_“I didn’t…Just get in before I change my mind,” he growled and Olivia finally clambered off her own cot and obeyed._

_Climbing into Slade’s cot was awkward and more complicated than it should have been. Slade finally got fed up with her fumbling and yanked her down by the wrists, pulling her back flush against his chest, which caused her to squeak. He chuckled, his breath a hot puff against the back of her neck, and she reveled in the heat seeping from his skin to hers._

_“Thanks,” she mumbled sleepily._

_“…Anytime, kid,” he whispered back, and Olivia was asleep before she could recognize the thick, uncomfortable flush in his voice._

\--

The first and second times Thea wakes to the sound of screaming somewhere else in the house, she just assumes someone left the TV on and goes back to sleep.

The third time she grumbles that someone _really_ needs to turn the damn TV off.

The fourth time she finally gets up to investigate and stumbles sleepily into her mother, who has just slipped out of Ollie’s room.

“Mom? What was that?” Thea asks muzzily and some dimly aware part of her realizes that it was never a TV at all, that she can now claim Olivia’s room as the source of the noise.

“Nothing, sweetheart, just go back to bed…”

“Mom,” Thea repeats, and she’s wide awake now, her voice hiking up an octave in her rising panic, “is something the matter with Ollie?”

“Thea.”

“No,” Thea practically snarls, “We just got her back and I’m as lost thinking about her as you are so why won’t you just _tell me_ what’s _wrong_?”

Moira sighs and her whole body sags with the movement, the proud business woman stance gone from her shoulders. In its place is the essence of worried mother weighing down her limbs. “Your sister is having some…difficulties. Adjusting.”

Thea frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Olivia’s been through some things. Hardships,” Moira tries, “She’s still experiencing some of the aftereffects.”

“Hardships. Like what?”

“I don’t know,” her mother admits, slumping against the wall, “she won’t talk about it. Doctor Lam, he said…He said twenty percent of her body was covered in scar tissue.”

“Why don’t you just _ask_ her?” Thea begs, despairing. The thought that she has no idea what really happened to Ollie out there, that she could easily have been living in hell for the past five years, is terrifying. “Hell, if you won’t, why don’t _I_ just ask her?”

“Don’t, Thea,” Moira orders, the business woman bleeding back into her voice, “pushing your sister on this will only make things worse. She’ll open up when she’s ready.”

Moira walks away and leaves Thea feeling like she’s the one waking up screaming.

\--

The fifth time Thea wakes up to the sound of screaming she sits by her sister’s bedside and talks about school and pop culture and meaningless drivel until Olivia’s sleep gets a little bit less restless.

\--

_Their fourth night of sharing a cot ended rather abruptly when Olivia thrashed her way into near-wakefulness, almost knocking Slade onto the floor in the process. He grabbed her by the shoulders and she reacted with a knee to his ribs. When she finally whimpered her way back into awareness his torso was littered in marks and bruises, which had her sputtering apologies between every hyperventilated breath._

_“You’re okay, kid, you’re okay,” Slade said._

_“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Olivia repeated like a mantra, her whole body shaking in a way that had nothing to do with the cold._

_“Kid,” Slade soothed, his rough palms skating over Olivia’s shoulders, “you don’t have to apologize. It’s a nightmare. It happens.”_

_He dragged her back until she was seated next to him, let her sink into his side and drop her blonde head onto his shoulder. She took a shaky breath, her whole body shuddering with the movement, and pressed in a little closer._

_“I’m sorry,” she said again._

_“It’s fine,” he grunted, glancing down at her somewhat awkwardly. “Did…did you want to talk about it?”_

_“Dreaming about my dad,” she confessed and in her mind’s eye she could see it again, that look in her father’s fathomless blue eyes, filled to the brim with guilt and pain, the tension in his hand before he pulled back and—_

_“You’ll see your family soon, kid,” and it was a meaningless promise. Even if her father wasn’t already dead and buried, they had already missed their plane._

_“Not him I won’t,” she said and as much as her father’s eyes before his death stuck with her, his eyes afterwards were that much worse, cold and hollow and staring. Judging. “Before I…Before I washed up here he shot himself right in front of me.”_

_She could feel his whole body stiffen along her side. “Oh, kid…”_

_“I just can’t get it out of my head.” She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, like maybe that would push the images out. “The way he looked and I—I just can’t.”_

_For a long moment Slade was quiet. When he finally spoke, his tone was low and rumbling, “I mentioned my son. Joseph?”_

_She nodded shakily, the spikes of her hair grating against the smooth skin of his shoulder._

_“He’s about five years old, now,” Slade said slowly, “but a couple years back I was on this job for ASIS, and the target abducted Joe.” He took a deep breath. “Tried to slit his throat right in front of me.”_

_Olivia took a sharp breath, but Slade calmed her with a hand on her shoulder. “Joe lived, but his vocal cords were severed. And for a while afterwards, I couldn’t get it out of my head…how terrified Joe was…the look on that smug bastard’s face,” Slade growled, “I had nightmares for ages. And it was all my fault.”_

_“It wasn’t your fault,” Olivia spoke up suddenly, covering his hand on her shoulder with her own. “It wasn’t.”_

_Slade shook Olivia’s hand off then went on, and in doing so missed the hurt look that crossed her face. “My point is, we all have nightmares, and we all have demons. We just have to be stronger than them.”_

_“Then we will be,” Olivia said with sudden confidence she didn’t entirely feel, “and we’ll get home and you’ll be with your son again and I’ll be with my family.”_

_“Sure, kid,” Slade said with a chuckle, and settled back to sleep. Olivia watched him for a long moment before she followed him down._

\--

Olivia has just finished replacing the covers on her bed when there is a knock on her bedroom door. “Come in,” she calls back without looking up, instead focusing on rearranging her pillows for the third time, like maybe if she moves them around enough they’ll finally feel comfortable and not like she’s sinking in quicksand every time she lays down to sleep. She hears the door creak open, and maybe she should get the hinges greased, but she likes the comfort that small warning sound brings. Once the last pillow is shoved into place she turns around and sees…

…one of the last people she’d been expecting.

“Hi,” Laurel says.

“Hi,” Olivia parrots, slightly stunned.

“I saw the news, and…I thought we could get lunch, maybe. Catch up.”

“Tommy’s picking me up later,” Olivia says automatically, then quickly adds, “but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you wanted to come along.”

Laurel raises an eyebrow. “Tommy Merlyn, jumping at the chance to take two women out on the town? Perish the thought.”

They both chuckle awkwardly, staring at each other with wide eyes and carefully arranged faces, as if one wrong move will suddenly result in one or both of them dropping dead where they stand.

“Heard you’re a full-fledged lawyer now,” Olivia tries.

“I don’t think either of us really wants to talk about my job, Olivia,” Laurel says, not unkindly, “no offense.”

“Yeah…okay. I…I wanted to apologize,” Olivia admits, but Laurel stops her with a light touch to the wrist.

“Ollie,” Laurel says, and her voice is so agonized and grief-stricken Olivia wishes not for the first time that she had drowned back with the Queen’s Gambit, “I don’t blame you. I never did. But if you could tell me anything, anything at all about Sara—”

“I watched her go under, Laurel,” Olivia admits, the words dragged out of her because she can’t be dishonest, not here, “I watched her go under and never come back up.”

“Okay,” Laurel says, “okay,” and then the two of them are hugging and nothing’s really okay and never will be again but they’ll make do with what they have.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm going to aim for a biweekly update schedule. We'll see how long that pans out.
> 
> As a head’s up, there is a short scene containing attempted rape/non-con towards the end of this chapter. I don’t think it’s too graphic, but figured I’d warn for it just in case.

Lunch is stilted and awkward. 

Laurel is trying, but she obviously doesn’t know how to act around Olivia anymore, although Olivia isn’t sure if that’s because Laurel was lying about not blaming her for Sara, or if it’s because Laurel genuinely can’t reconcile Olivia now with who she was. Because Olivia then was loud and bright and overpowering, but now she’s quiet and subtle and sharp, more likely to sit and observe than to castigate and command. Tommy seems out of his element as well, but Olivia thinks that might have something more to do with how he keeps inching his hand towards Laurel’s knee under the table. 

She’s not entirely sure how she feels about that development.

Halfway through the meal Laurel finally opens up, sharing tidbits about her dad and about her job, while Tommy mostly talks about his still-booming social life. Olivia doesn’t know what to talk about, doesn’t know how to start, so she lets Tommy fill the space. 

Thankfully, he’s more than happy to. 

“So, Ollie, about your homecoming,” Tommy starts once their eating has slowed to casually picking at their trays. 

“Tommy, I really don’t need a party.” 

“Oh, come on,” he elbows her, “it’ll be a blast. Besides, you can’t tell me you had all that much tequila on that island of yours.” 

Olivia sighs. “Not really, no.” 

“So let me throw you a big coming home bash! You’ll love it, trust me.” 

Olivia and Laurel share a look. Olivia’s is slightly pinched with discomfort; Laurel mostly just looks like she’s trying not to laugh at Olivia’s expense. 

“Fine,” Olivia says exasperatedly, “but nothing too big.” Which pretty much guarantees Tommy will go out of his way to plan a huge rave. 

Which, in turn, is more or less confirmed when Tommy grins. Widely. “Okay.” 

“And I really don’t want any tequila.” 

“Right, I am totally your guy.” 

“Thought you’d be a little more excited about a party, Ollie,” Laurel comments just as a waitress comes by with their check. 

Tommy leaps for it, whipping out his credit card. “Yeah, used to be we couldn’t pull you away from the club circuit.” 

Olivia shrugs. “I guess the past five years kind of…put things in perspective.” 

Tommy frowns. “You’re still down for checking out the rest of the city tonight, though, right?” 

“Yes, Tommy,” Olivia says with a slight roll of her eyes. “Did you want to come with, Laurel?” 

“I should really be getting back to work,” Laurel says apologetically. “Maybe some other time?” 

“Yeah, of course,” Tommy says quickly. Olivia just nods. The waitress returns with Tommy’s card, prompting all three of them to stand. 

“Anytime you want to talk, Olivia, just let me know,” Laurel offers, “my door’s always open.” 

And Olivia doesn’t feel like talking anytime soon, but she still smiles at that. “Thanks, Laurel. I appreciate it.” 

The three of them share awkward smiles and splinter apart, Laurel towards her car and Tommy and Olivia towards the back alley where Tommy parked his. 

Olivia has barely made it to the passenger side door when the first tranquilizer dart strikes Tommy in the neck. The second one hits Olivia soon after and as she loses consciousness she decides that she really, _really_ doesn’t like guys who run around wearing masks. 

\--

It’s not the first time she’s come to and found herself tied to a chair _no that honor goes to waking up in the appropriated wreckage of a plane her hands bound behind her back with twine and terror rushing through her veins and she twists and begs and writhes until her bones snap and she punches that crazy Australian bastard in the face because he’s probably going to kill her anyway but she can at least try to break his nose_ and it certainly won’t be the last. 

Getting her hands out of the zip cuff is a simple matter, as is flipping the chair around and fighting off the thugs until she can make sure Tommy is alright. Chasing after the last kidnapper is a little harder, because her breath comes shorter than it used to and she’s not as used to navigating an urban landscape. 

But vaulting off pipes and scaffolding is a lot like leaping between tree branches, and when she catches the kidnapper and makes her first kill since returning home she tries not to feel anything at all. 

She is less than successful. 

\--

“So this…person…in a green hood just swoops in and takes out three armed kidnappers,” Detective Lance repeats, his tone dripping with condescension. He’s never liked Olivia. She can’t say she blames him. “And you couldn’t make out any features, or..?” 

“I was a little out of it,” Olivia says absently, running her eyes over the police sketch. The inaccuracy of it is somewhat hilarious. 

“And what about you?” Lance goes on, turning his flint-like gaze on Tommy, “you see the green hood?” 

“No? Maybe?” Tommy says with a puzzled frown. “I thought I saw a guy run by, but…it was all a bit blurry.” 

“Right.” Lance chuckles humorlessly, his eyes flitting back to Olivia. “Funny, isn’t it. One day back and you’re already dragging people into trouble.” 

Olivia looks down at her hands and stays silent.

\--

_Slade was finally starting to look better after the close-call with the infection, color returning to his face even if his skin was still coated in a thin veil of sweat._

_Olivia picked up one of the few remaining mostly-clean rags they had left and dabbed at his forehead with it. “It’ll probably be a couple days before it clears up completely. But at least your fever’s gone down.”_

_Slade batted her hand away and took another sip of the makeshift herbal tea. He made a face. “How much more of this do I have to drink?”_

_“Don’t know. Yao Fei didn’t exactly leave me with a prescription and a doctor’s note.” She reached over to check his bandage again. The wound itself had mostly stopped seeping pus, thank god, but that didn’t stop the gauze from smelling like rot. “We should probably change this.”_

_“I don’t need you fussing over me,” Slade complained, “you’ve helped plenty enough already.”_

_“And in case you’ve forgotten,” she said sharply, “it’s my fault you got hurt in the first place. So.” Her shoulders sagged. “Just let me. Please.”_

_“Kid.” His brows drew together in something like concern, and when he spoke his voice was a low, soothing rumble. “You okay?”_

_“Yeah,” she said, just a tad too quickly, “I’m fine.”_

\--

Olivia manages to slip away from her new bodyguard and break into her father’s old factory without much effort. Getting her new hideout set up, on the other hand, takes her well into the evening with frequent breaks, but it’s worth it. Between the information center and the weapons and training equipment, she feels like she has her own little hideaway. A little nest tucked away from the prying eyes of the world.

There were places like that on the island, too, but she’d lost them. Every single one.

She has no intention of losing this one.

Her first mission is scheduled for tonight and she prepares her weapons first, crafting each new arrow carefully. She adds a few trick ones to her repertoire and she has never been more thankful for her technical skills, the ones she didn’t even know she had the aptitude for until she used them to fix up a broken airplane radio. Technology is an advantage she didn’t always have the luxury of back on Lian Yu and she tends to make use of it here in Starling.

She lets a few arrows fly at the back wall and is pleased to see her aim is still deadly accurate.

Once her quiver is full, she prepares her attire.

The cut of the leather is fairly form-fitting but the padding around the chest and arms conceals her curves well. Add Shado’s hood over top and it will be impossible to tell from a long-distance first glance whether she is male or female. For the final touch, she clips a voice filter of her own design to her quiver’s shoulder strap that will drop her natural cadence low enough to leave even witnesses of a close-up encounter slightly confused.

It all contributes to a layer of anonymity she has long since come to appreciate. After all, she learned a long time ago that not everyone would treat her gently just because she had a pretty face.

\--

_Part of Olivia wished she had stayed with Slade in the control tower. But then again, part of Olivia still wished she had never gotten on the boat in the first place._

_A guard threw her in the center of the camp, her knees hitting the dirt from the force of it. It was like a twisted replay of before, except this time she doubted Yao Fei would step in to save her again. “What, you’re going to make us fight again?” she snarled and hoped the anger was enough to cover her growing fear._

_“Oh no Miss Queen, this isn’t another match,” Fyers said lightly, his lips curled back in a sneer, “it’s a game.”_

_Wintergreen was on her before she knew what was happening. All the training in the world couldn’t have prepared her for the way he pushed her belly-down into the dirt, one large hand pinning her wrists while the other tore the buttons off her shirt. He pressed his weight into her back the same moment his fingers dug into the flesh of her left breast and her scream was suffocated by the gravel pushing against her mouth. The rest of the mercenaries stood around the two of them in a circle, most of them jeering and catcalling. A scant few, Yao Fei included, turned away and refused to watch. Fyers, in contrast, couldn’t tear his eyes away, standing at the group’s head with a sharp, unyielding set to his stance and a cold, cruel smile on his lips._

_Olivia squeezed her eyes shut and tried to be anywhere but there._

_Not a moment later the camp burst into flames._

_The resulting noise and confusion was enough to catch Wintergreen off-guard, his grip on Olivia loosening just enough. She scrambled away from him, flight instincts kicked into overdrive just as Slade stepped into the encampment, a grim expression on his face._

_“Slade,” Wintergreen hissed._

_“Is this really what you’ve sunk to, Billy?” Slade asked. He drew his blade, eyes heavy with pending guilt and regret, shoulders rolling as he steeled himself for what he was about to do._

_Wintergreen moved first._

_They were almost evenly matched, bodies moving and swords swinging in tandem. Olivia watched, mesmerized, unable to look the other way even when it looked like Slade was about to lose. But Slade still jumped back up, still got the upper hand, and held Billy close as he sunk a sword into his partner’s eye._

_Wintergreen’s body slumped to the ground and left Slade and Olivia staring at each other, her in shock, and him with remorse._

_Then Slade went down with a bullet in his shoulder and spurred Olivia into action._

_She had never fired a gun in her life but she still picked one up and wielded it like a shield, relying on the line of fire to cover her while she grappled to steady Slade. His weight was cumbersome but she still managed to get him up and moving, her own body acting like a human crutch._

_She had almost gotten them out of the camp when, ironically, a gun was shoved in her face._

_It was almost instinct, a reaction. She moved just the way Slade had taught her, disarming the guard and flipping him on his back before he could even twitch a finger._

_“That was beautiful, kid,” Slade said and turned his head the other way when she reached down to trade her ruined shirt for the unconscious guard’s._

_And somehow, that small gesture succeeded in salvaging what little was left of her dignity. “Thanks,” she said softly, voice thick, and they both knew it wasn’t because of the compliment._

\--

It doesn’t take Olivia long to track down Adam Hunt. 

She’s dangerous, lethal; not a victim trapped by circumstance but an arrow seeking its target. It’s almost like she’s on the island again, violence and justice singing in her veins _and it’s just like he said just like he always said where strength and survival spur her on and define her and her weapon is just as much a part of her as her limbs and she wishes he was at her back again fighting alongside her blades spinning_ and when she lands on Hunt’s car she knows with a sense of finality that _this_ is what she was meant to do, what she survived for.

She draws her bow and feels truly alive for the first time since she got back.


	4. Chapter 4

Initially, when Olivia had pictured visiting Queen Consolidated again, she’d imagined scouring it for clues, for evidence related to the list. Of tracking down and eradicating her father’s shadier business practices, or locating tech and resources to use during her outings under the hood. 

Instead, she gets cornered by her mother and step-father in what used to be her father’s office. 

“Walter and I have something to discuss with you,” Moira says brightly, motioning at the couches in front of them, “come, please sit.” 

This is a trap and Olivia knows it but she sits anyway, leans back in the comfortable leather seat. It feels better on her back. Moira and Walter sit across from her, looking oddly like a king and queen waiting to pass judgment on a petty criminal. The image is as appropriate as it is unsettling. 

“The company is breaking ground on a new site for Applied Sciences, and we’d like to dedicate the building in your father’s name,” Walter explains. 

“Nice,” she says, and she means it. No matter the man her father was or what he became, it’s good someone’s honoring his memory. Her family can do it in their small way, and Olivia can do it in hers. 

But then Moira just has to add, “And we’d like to make an announcement that you’ll be taking a position of leadership in the company.” 

Olivia blinks. She has never considered taking over Queen Consolidated. Not in the past five years, not in the twenty or so preceding them, and certainly not now. Especially not now. She has plans, things she needs to do. Promises she needs to fulfill. Promises she can’t afford to break. “No.” 

“Olivia, it’s _your_ company,” Moira insists, “your _father’s_ company.” 

“You’re exactly right; my father’s company,” Olivia says, “not mine.” 

“And you’re Robert Queen’s daughter,” Moira argues. 

“I don’t need to be reminded of that.” 

Obviously you do—”

“Olivia,” Walter interrupts, his eyes jumping between his wife and eldest step-daughter, “we know this transition has been hard for you…”

“Thank you, Walter. But honestly, I don’t think you realize how much.” Olivia offers them a sad smile that quickly hardens into a frown. “Somewhere along the line I think you all got the impression I was actually in the Bahamas relaxing on a beach for five years and somehow completing my Master’s in Business at the same time.” 

“Five years ago your irresponsibility was somewhat charming,” Moira says angrily, rising to her feet, “it isn’t anymore.” 

“Let’s be honest, Mom.” Olivia stands as well, irritation slipping into her voice. “My irresponsibility was never charming.” 

“All the more reason for you to—” Moira starts to argue. 

“Mom. Listen to me,” Olivia begs, “I’m trying, I really am. But I don’t sleep, I don’t eat. I’ve been back a little over a week and I still don’t feel like I’m really _home_. Shoving the company at me now? _That_ would be irresponsible.” 

Walter moves subtly, his eyes somber, and Olivia thinks he might be ready to agree with her, but Moira cuts in, fast and sharp and stubborn. “That’s why you need this, a routine, something to get you back on track again. We’re trying to _help_ you, Olivia.” 

Olivia’s eyes dart to Digg at the door, to Walter and her mother and back again, and she feels pressure crashing down on her in brick-filled waves. Maybe that’s what squeezes the angered words out from her, the heat of them hissing past her lips. “No. I don’t think you are.” 

She pushes past them, Digg guiding the way, and lets the crowd of paparazzi swallow her whole. 

\--

It’s not the first time Thea has walked in on her older sister changing, but it’s the first time Olivia’s reaction has been so violent and instant.

“Don’t you knock!?” Olivia spits, pulling the two sides of the button-down closed around her torso in a poor attempt of hiding what Thea’s already seen.

“You’re the one who left your door wide open,” Thea snaps. She ignores her sister’s protests and yanks the shirt back open. 

She’s lost weight, which isn’t surprising given the number of times Thea has caught her waking up from a nightmare only to puke her guts out. The scars are numerous and alarming, from the pale puckered lines trailing on Olivia’s ribs and collarbone to the spiderweb-starburst over her right breast. There are tattoos as well, ones that Thea is certain weren’t present five years ago. The sharp points of a star peek out from underneath Olivia’s left bra strap, while the crisp black lines and delicate brushstrokes of Chinese characters run down her side. Out of everything the burns are the most unsettling, discolored flesh curling around her forearms, and Thea doesn’t even want to imagine what made the deep gouges over Olivia’s hip. 

“No more swimsuits for me, right?” Olivia tries, but the joke falls painfully flat. 

“Olivia, what happened to you out there?” Thea asks softly. 

Olivia averts her eyes, and just from that, Thea knows what she’s going to say. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Right, because you never want to talk to me about anything,” Thea says angrily. 

“Thea,” Olivia sighs, and Thea can’t believe that this is her older sister. That this tired, judgmental shut-in used to be someone she looked up to and aspired to be. It hurts something inside her, like someone cut off pieces of her lungs and then tried to glue them back in place wrong. “I…I need to get better, at talking about what happened to me out there, but…” Olivia shakes her head slowly. “I’m not ready. Not yet.” 

Part of Thea thinks Olivia won’t ever be ready, not really, but she takes her out back and begs her to open up anyway. 

She leaves Olivia standing in front of her own headstone and mostly feels like that was a colossal waste of time and breath. 

\--

Olivia shows up at Laurel’s apartment with heavy thoughts and a convenience store bag in one hand. 

“Ollie! Hey,” Laurel says, eyes wide with surprise. “What are you doing here?” 

“I was hoping your open-door policy was still in effect.” Olivia raises an eyebrow. “You do know you have two cop cars stationed out front, right?” 

Laurel huffs. “That’s my father for you.” She steps back. “But yes, the door, as you can see, is very open.” 

Olivia steps in after her. “Thank you. I brought ice cream, if you’re interested. It’s, um. Been awhile, since I’ve had any.” 

“I bet.” Laurel ushers Olivia to the couch while she retreats to the kitchen to grab bowls and spoons. “So, what did you want to talk about?” 

“I’m not sure where to start,” Olivia admits. “Thea got upset with me today. Pointed out that I need to open up more.” 

Laurel returns from the kitchen, bowls and ice cream scoop in hand, and slips onto the couch next to Olivia. “Well, I’m not going to say she’s wrong, but don’t push yourself. Open up when you’re ready.” 

“That’s the thing, though,” Olivia fishes the ice cream carton from its bag and pops the lid, “I feel like, if I don’t force myself, I never will.” 

Olivia takes the first bowl and the scoop from Laurel and finishes shoveling a generous lump of ice cream into it before she continues. “There were things that happened to me, out there, that…weren’t good. And I feel like, if I talk about them, it will change how people see me. 

I want to be different. I’m not the person that I was, and I’m not the person that everyone seems to think I should be. But I don’t want to be that person I had to become, either, I—” Olivia stops, her breath catching in her throat, and realizes her eyes started watering a sentence and a half ago. Her fingers are numb against the carton where they’re gripping it too tight. 

Laurel lightly pries it from her and sets it on the coffee table. “Ollie,” she says gently, “what is this really about?” 

And it would be so easy to just spill everything, right then. Like ice cream melting to the floor. “My mother wants me to take a position at the company,” Olivia says instead, and that’s part of it, but it’s not what she really wants to say. “I tried telling her no, but, well.” Her smile is wry. “She said I was just being _irresponsible_.”

“To be fair, that is pretty classic you,” Laurel points out. “And I can’t say I can picture you ruling the world.” 

“Attending board meetings isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, no,” Olivia allows. “But that’s not really it. I made some promises, while I was on the island. To my dad, to myself, to…” She trails off and reaches up to fiddle absently with the pin in her hair. “My point is, I can’t really keep those promises if I have to run around briefing stocks.” 

Laurel hums. “Well. You said you wanted to open up more. Just…be honest. Talk to Moira, tell her what you told me. Be the adult you know you are.” 

Olivia opens her mouth to answer but freezes when she picks up the distinctly familiar sound of footsteps on fire escape. “Did you hear that?” 

\--

“Is there really something so wrong with taking interest in the family business?” Moira complains. She and Thea are curled up in the master bedroom for their irregular movie night, a random chick flick playing onscreen and a bowl of popcorn nestled in the space between them. It’s their first time really talking like this since Olivia came home. A chance to unwind and bond, mother to daughter. 

“I always kind of thought that if I ever got married my husband would be the one to do that,” Thea says absently, “maybe Ollie thought that, too.” 

“Okay, fine,” Moira says, “but she’s twenty-seven and has avoided anything that could be called ‘dating’ since she was your age. Honestly, I should probably just give up the idea of grandchildren.” 

Thea frowns. “Whoa, Mom.” 

Moira runs a hand down her face. “Sorry, sweetheart. It’s just…been a rough day.” 

“…You said Olivia had scars.” Thea fiddles with the remote in her hands, like if she presses a button she can make this conversation easier. “Have you seen them?” 

Moira exhales slowly. “No,” she admits, “I haven’t.” 

“I did, today.” Thea brings her hand up, tracing a shaky line across her collarbone and then her ribs. “There were…cuts. Here and here. And burns, and holes and—” Thea cuts off with a sharp breath. She tries to imagine what it must be like, for Ollie, who is obviously so ashamed of the marks. Her badges of survival. Tries to imagine Olivia putting herself out there and casually dating with those badges like warning signs marring her skin. She’d like to think it wouldn’t matter, but, well, some people are shallow. “Mom, what _happened_ to her out there?” 

Moira wraps an arm around her daughter’s shoulders and tugs her close, her eyes unfocused and unclear. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t know.” 

\--

_“Yeah,” Slade hummed, looking over the lacerations left on Olivia’s upper back, “that’s going to scar.”_

_“Well, if you wouldn’t hit so damn hard,” Olivia grumbled._

_“Then maybe you should think about moving a little faster next time,” Slade retorted and let the hem of Olivia’s shirt fall back down. He smoothed the wrinkles of fabric over her shoulders before pulling back. “You’ll be fine, kid.”_

_Olivia shrugged him off. “Right. Another one for the collection, I suppose.”_

_Slade frowned. “There’s no shame in having scars.”_

_“I know that,” she said softly, shoulders hunched. “They’re just…not exactly…”_

_He settled down next to her, their shoulders brushing. “Hey,” he said, and the gentleness in his tone made heat rush to her face, “you’re fine, with or without them. Trust me.”_

_And she probably shouldn’t have, but she really did._

\--

The next morning Olivia finds Moira in the master bedroom, assembling herself in front of the vanity. 

“Olivia, sweetheart, glad to see you’re up!” Moira cheers, fussing with her earrings in the mirror. “We’re leaving for the ceremony in an hour—”

“About that, Mom,” Olivia murmurs, “I’ll attend the ceremony, and I’ll say a few words, if you like, but I am not joining the company." 

“We’ve talked about this, Olivia, it’s in your best interests to—”

“And I’ve told you, it’s not,” Olivia says firmly. 

“If you think I’m going to step aside and let you throw yourself into partying again…” Moira starts. 

“Why not? You’re already letting Thea.” Moira cringes at that and Olivia winces in kind, lifting a hand to pinch at the bridge of her nose. “No, sorry, that was uncalled for.” 

“It’s true.” 

“Doesn’t mean I needed to say it,” Olivia breathes. “Look, Mom, can we sit? There’s something I need to tell you, and it’s…not exactly easy to say.” 

Moira’s brow furrows but she crosses to the bed anyway, and Olivia privately enjoys the reversal of their confrontation at Queen Consolidated. She follows in her mother’s footsteps and sits on the bed as well, legs crossed. 

“This will be hard to hear,” Olivia warns, but Moira nods, eyes clouded with apprehension. Olivia settles her hands in her lap and stares down at them. 

“When I was on the island,” she begins, “I had a lot of time to think. About who I was, and the kind of person I wanted to be. I made plans. There’s things I want to do. I want to eat ice cream until I get sick of it. I want to run my own night club and dance until I fall over. I want to be able to talk to people about what happened to me. I want to have a family again. And I’m sorry, Mom. But I can’t do all those things and run Dad’s company.” 

“Olivia.” Moira sets a hand on Olivia’s shoulder. “Sometimes, we have to do things we don’t want to.” 

“That’s true,” Olivia allows, “and sometimes, we don’t always get what we want. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight for those things.” 

They exchange a look, and finally, something in Moira’s expression falters. 

“When did you start sounding so grown up?” Moira says wetly, her arms winding around Olivia’s shoulders. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Olivia says softly, “somewhere along the way.” 


	5. Chapter 5

When Thea gets home from school she angrily tosses her backpack at the nearest armchair and marches straight towards her bedroom. 

She still can’t believe it, not really. Her mother has never grounded her in her life, and sure, Walter’s a little more stern when it comes to discipline, but while she loves Walter he’s not her father and never will be, as much as he helped ease that hole in her life where Robert Queen used to be. This whole grounding deal has Olivia written all over it. Olivia, who used to be the cool, charming big sister until she came back sour and damaged and cold. 

And as much as Olivia closing herself off hurts, now it mostly just makes Thea angry. 

So no mall trip today, okay, she can handle that. But her friends are planning on hitting the Poison tonight and getting absolutely _wasted_ , and if her mother and sister think they can keep her from going out on the town they are sorely mistaken. She can be stealthy and crafty when she needs to be, and really it wouldn’t even be that hard: Moira’s usually out of the house performing various social duties for the company and lately Olivia’s been so wrapped up in her own issues she’s never home. Sneaking out will be painfully easy. 

Then she sees it, sitting idly on top of the dresser just inside of Olivia’s room. 

It’s actually the first time Thea has seen the clip where it isn’t pinned in Ollie’s hair. Her big sister never takes the thing off. 

It’s a beautiful piece though, a thin tubular bit of deep green stone with rough designs etched into the sides. Almost certainly handmade, though it looks like the clip portion of the barrette has been replaced at least once. 

“Speedy, I’m pretty sure I’d remember if I left a standing invitation for you to snoop in my room.” 

Thea jolts, rapping her knuckles hard against the dresser in the process. “Ow. Um, sorry, I was just…”

“It’s fine,” Ollie dismisses. “Did you need something?” 

Thea thinks about the clip, how striking it would look paired with that strapless turquoise mini-dress she got last week, and recalls bygone days when she would go to her older sister for fashion advice and come back decked out in glam. “Yeah, actually, I was wondering if maybe you’d let me borrow this?” She holds up the barrette. 

It’s almost funny how quickly Ollie’s expression closes off, how her bright eyes suddenly get dull and hard and her lips tighten in a thin line. Almost funny, but mostly it just causes an ache to settle deep in Thea’s gut. “No.” 

“I promise I’ll give it right back, it’ll just be for tonight…”

“I said no, Thea,” Ollie snaps, reaching forward and all but tearing the clip out of the younger sister’s hands. Olivia shakes her head and deposits the clip back in her jewelry box. “You’re not even supposed to be going out tonight, anyway.” 

“Yeah,” Thea says bitterly, “thanks for reminding me.” 

Olivia gives her a look filled with so much pity and condescension Thea wants nothing more than to rip the expression off her sister’s face and ask her where she gets off. Ollie’s no different from Thea herself, and she is definitely no fucking better. “This really is for your own good, I promise.” 

She waits until Olivia has left the house again before she sneaks back in to steal the barrette. 

\--

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Laurel says, tucking into her drink. 

“Well, you needed to relax, and I needed to check out the competition,” Olivia points out reasonably. She had toyed with the idea of running a club in the past, and as much as the club she’s building now is a cover for her other nighttime activities, she likes the idea of having her own business. Something to define her, to set her apart from her parents and her past in the eyes of Starling City. Something she doesn’t have to hide. 

She’s been hiding so many things, lately. 

The Poison is almost at full capacity tonight, people hitting the dance floor in droves. Laurel’s friend from work is barely visible in the crowd, already lost in the throng of moving bodies. The sheer number of people makes part of Olivia claustrophobic in a way she never used to be, but another part of her relishes in the sounds and lights and _life_.

She hopes she can craft her own place into something like this. It may just be a cover, but it will be a damn good cover. 

“Well, hello ladies!” a familiar voice crows. Both Olivia and Laurel turn away from the bar to see Tommy approach, a big grin on his face. “Surprised to see you two out and about. Thought you both had risen above us mere clubbing mortals.” 

“That’s cute, Tommy,” Laurel says, her tone both patronizing and somehow fond. She accepts the drink Tommy hands her, regardless. 

“Just thought I’d see what passes for entertainment in Starling nowadays,” Olivia says, “I mentioned I’m opening up a club, right?” 

“Oh yeah,” Tommy says with a nod, “I had heard something like that. Let me know if you need any advice. Or taste-testers. I am totally up for testing tastes.” 

And just like that Olivia has an armful of inebriated little sister. 

“Ollie!” Thea’s smile is loose and the alcohol on her breath is so potent the smell turns Olivia’s stomach. “I am so drunk right now, you have no idea.” 

“I thought you were supposed to be grounded.” 

“I am. Thank you, thank you for that, by the way,” Thea says flippantly and Olivia has had just about enough of this behavior. It’s like she’s staring back in time five years at a younger version of herself getting caught in a downward spiral. She can’t stand it. It makes her feel like a failure of an older sister, a role model, an authority figure. 

“You and I?” Olivia snaps, digging her nails into Thea’s forearm, “we’re done for the night.” 

“Bummer, we’ve barely gotten started,” Tommy pouts. 

“It’s alright,” Olivia says dismissively, “I wasn’t planning on drinking much tonight, anyway.” Then her eyes zone in on the clip in Thea’s hair. 

“Thea,” Olivia says, voice strangled. 

Her little sister’s expression turns sly, a terrible smile sneaking across her lips. “It’s nice, isn’t it? My big sister almost didn’t let me borrow it, but, I thought it was too good to pass up.” 

“Thea, give it back _now_ or I will take it back and you won’t like how.” 

The look in Thea’s piercing blue eyes is like ice and lightning and infinitely sobering. She rips the pin from her dark locks, and the sound of hair tearing almost causes Olivia to wince in sympathy. She does wince when Thea shoves the clip into her hands with more force than strictly necessary and pulls back to stare her down. 

The expression on Thea’s face is not kind. “You know, sometimes? I wish you’d just stayed dead.” With that, the younger Queen sister turns on her heel and storms out. 

The older one stands spine stiff, hand clenched so tightly around the barrette the clip bites into the skin of her palm, and tries to ignore the prickling sensation beneath her eyelids. 

\--

_“Your hair’s growing back.”_

_“Yes, thank you, I didn’t notice when it kept falling in front of my face,” Olivia snarked, trying in vain to push her bangs out of her eyes for what felt like the sixty-third time. It wasn’t quite long enough yet to pull back with a piece of twine like Shado often did. “I should really just hack it straight off again…” Except she didn’t want to do that, not really, missed the long golden waves that flowed around her shoulders. It was hard to be vain in a place like this, but that hair was part of her image, something that connected her to her mother._

_“Or you could try this instead,” Slade offered, tossing a small object into Olivia’s lap, “and stop complaining.”_

_Olivia picked up the small piece of jade, ran her finger tips over the tiny grooves in the edges that looked like they’d been carved with a hunting knife. “Did…did you make this?”_

_“Yes. No. Shut up.”_

_Olivia slipped the pin into the choppy remnants of her hair and bit back a smile._

\--

Thea is in her room nursing the worst hangover of her short life when she hears a timid knock on her bedroom door. She gets up reluctantly, grumbles the whole way because her head is pounding and there are too many lights and sounds and whoever invented fermentation should be fired. But she opens the door anyway, only to find Olivia standing there carrying a pile of clothes and wearing a solemn expression on her face. 

“What do you want, Olivia?” Thea says coldly, ignoring the way her sister flinches and draws in on herself. 

“Do you want any of these?” Ollie asks, holding up an armful of dresses, “Because if not I’m probably going to donate them.” 

Thea rolls her eyes. “If you’re trying to apologize it’s going to take more than an olive branch and some nice clothes.” 

“I know.” Ollie shifts the dresses around, revealing that sitting in the crook of her other arm is a stack full of catalogues. “So I thought you could help me pick out some venue and design ideas for the club. You’ve always had a better eye for décor than me.” 

Thea huffs out a breath and steps back to let her sister in. 

She’d left her sketchbook out and it sits innocuously on her bed, open to a fresh page. Olivia drops her peace offering beside it and proceeds to take full advantage of her presence in Thea’s room by examining each poster and picture frame hanging off the walls. Maybe Thea deserves it for her own snooping earlier, maybe it’s just sisterly curiosity, but for some reason Thea just feels like she’s being subjected to a drug search. 

Mercifully, that doesn’t seem like Olivia’s goal. 

“You’ve gotten pretty good,” Olivia notes, eyes running over one of the few pencil drawings Thea liked well enough to pin up on the wall. 

“It’s just a stupid hobby,” Thea dismisses, “I tried a lot of them while you were gone. Gymnastics, track. Even archery, once, if you can believe it.” She frowns. “I was really bad at that one.” 

Olivia sounds like she’s choking for a minute, but she recovers before Thea can ask what the matter is. “Oh I don’t know,” she says with a poor attempt at nonchalance, “I think this one might stick around. If I remember correctly, when you were five, you used to draw on _everything_.”

Thea laughs half-heartedly in remembrance. “Dad wouldn’t stop buying me crayons. Mom was so _mad_.” She flops down on the bed, arms crossed in front of her chest. “What do you want, Ollie?” 

“What I’ve always wanted,” and god Olivia sounds so small, “for us to be close again.” 

“Well you’re doing a bang-up job of that,” Thea hisses, “you’re keeping secrets, running around being a big fat hypocrite. It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.” Her mouth twists in displeasure until she’s baring her teeth. “You got pissed at me over a _hair clip_.” 

For a long moment, the air in the room is tense and heavy with silence, before Olivia sighs and takes a seat on the bed. She reaches up to pull the offending pin from her hair, and of course she’s wearing it of course she is, chances are Olivia won’t risk letting it out of her sight again, since it apparently means so damn much to her. She rolls the clip between her thumb and forefinger, the green stone glinting in the lamp light. “This was a gift, from a friend of mine,” she says finally, “he wasn’t usually a sentimental person.” 

“Oh,” is all Thea can manage in response. 

“He’s gone, now,” Ollie explains, and her voice is choked and pained and Thea wonders how recent it was, what his name was and where Olivia met him. “He didn’t leave me with very much, but what he did, I’d like to keep close.” She exhales, long and slow and shaky. “I’m sorry I’ve been…distant. Controlling. It’s just…I made a lot of mistakes, when I was your age, and I don’t want to see you make the same ones.” 

“It’s okay,” Thea says. She crawls into her sister’s space and cuddles up to her like she did when they were small. It’s nostalgic and wonderful and soothes something deep in her soul. “I—I’m sorry I said I…I don’t, you know. Getting you back is one of the best things that’s happened to me in a long time.” 

Olivia presses a kiss to the top of Thea’s head. “Love you, Speedy.” She pulls back and reaches for the nearest catalogue. “Now, how do you feel about the color green?” 

Thea grins, grabs her sketchbook and draws spiral support structures over a sleek dance floor. “I think we could make it work.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone who's stuck around with me so far and I hope you're enjoying the fic! I realize the pacing's probably been a bit slow so far, but things should start picking up a bit next chapter. :)

Olivia doesn’t need to think twice about bringing Diggle to her hideout when Deadshot plants a bullet in his shoulder. She moves methodically, purposefully. Retrieving the panacea and preparing an herbal tea to treat curare poisoning is old-hat by now, and tending John’s bullet wound is no different from the many wounds she had to treat back on the island. 

This wasn’t the way she’d planned on bringing Diggle into her operation, but some slightly twisted part of her appreciates the opportunity. 

“Olivia?” Diggle whispers as his eyes finally start to focus. His gaze darts to the arrows standing proudly amongst the armory, the monitors blinking lights over in the command center, the row of little clay pots full of growing herbs set up along the wall. “You’re that vigilante.” 

She settles for lightly nodding in response, and when he takes a swing at her it is so sloppy that it she barely has to expend any effort to deflect him and send him careening back into the table. “Careful. You were poisoned.” 

“I thought the vigilante was supposed to be a man,” Diggle says between labored breaths, his brows knitted together in shock and confusion. 

Olivia quirks a smile at him and presses a button on the device in her hand, causing her next words to slip out several octaves lower. “Voice changer.” She flips the device off. “The SCPD runs around chasing a man that doesn’t exist, and I stay safe in the knowledge that I don’t and will never have a penis. Win-win, I think.” 

“Not so much for the cops.” 

“Lose-win, then.” 

“You’re being awful flippant about this,” Diggle says, anger finally slipping into his tone, “considering you’re a criminal.” 

“And you’re being awful calm about this,” Olivia returns easily, “but I think we both know I’m not. Not the way you mean.” 

“You’re breaking laws, Olivia! You’re a goddamned murderer!” Diggle yells, and he’s still covered in sweat and he wavers on his feet but there is so much energy in his words, “How much more of a criminal do you think you need to be?” 

“I kill when I have to,” Olivia justifies, but the words sound weak even to her. The longer this goes on the more she knows that a killer isn’t really who she wants to be, no matter what the island crafted out of her. A killer isn’t an inspiration, a role model. A killer isn’t a hero. 

Diggle seems to realize he’s hit a nerve, because he puffs up a little bit more, dark eyes blazing. “I think you lost your damn mind on that island.” 

“Maybe,” Olivia says breezily. It’s something she’s considered herself, many times over. “Found some things, though.” 

“Like what? Archery lessons?” 

“Clarity,” she says simply. 

She doesn’t stop him when he leaves. 

\--

_“Dinner,” Slade said jovially, tearing off a piece of the boar he had spent the past several hours preparing and roasting on a spit in the center of the fuselage, “is served.”_

_“Yay,” Olivia said dryly, sitting down cross-legged next to him, “just what I’ve always wanted. Dead pig.”_

_“And where, exactly, do you think bacon comes from?” Slade asked. He passed her a portion of a leg, which she took gingerly._

_“Bacon doesn’t have eyes,” she shot back, her eyes shifting to the boar. “Seriously, it’s like it’s watching me eat it. It’s creepy.”_

_Slade snorted and moved to put one hand in front of the boar’s dead eyes, as if to block its vision. “Better?”_

_“Marginally.” Olivia shifted back in her seat and nibbled lightly at the food in her hands. “I’m just getting sick of eating dead animal all the time.”_

_“You could try some of that dirt instead,” Slade mocked, using his free hand to point out a particularly earthy patch, “it’s edible, mostly.” He flashed her a grin. “High in iron.”_

_“You’re disgusting.”_

_That just made him grin wider. “If you get a nice fat earthworm there’s some protein in it for ya, too.”_

_She polished off the rest of the meat and chucked the bone at his head. He didn’t bother dodging it, letting it bounce off him and fall to the floor. “You’re terrible.”_

_”So which is it, kid?” he teased. “Am I disgusting, or am I terrible?”_

_”You’re both, damn it,” she huffed, and when he started laughing at her in that rich, full-throated chuckle of his she decided it was the best sound she’d heard in a long time._

\--

“Couldn’t sleep either?” Thea asks, sliding over to make room for Olivia on the couch. 

“Not really,” Ollie says, automatically reaching over to take some of Thea’s chips. Olivia has finally stopped getting sick after her nightmares as much, and to the relief of everyone in the Queen household the nausea seems to have been replaced with a newfound appetite. Thea dutifully relinquishes her midnight snack. “What are you watching?” 

“Peter Declan,” Thea says, then remembers that Olivia is a little out of the loop when it comes to the local news. “He’s this guy who murdered his wife in their baby’s room. Psycho.” 

Olivia’s brow furrows, her eyes narrowing at the screen while Declan pleads his innocence for the twelfth time. Thea sighs and clicks the television off. 

“Why can’t you sleep?” Thea asks, passing Olivia another chip. 

Ollie takes it absentmindedly, flipping it between her fingers before she pops it in her mouth. “Bad dreams, mostly.” 

“What about?” 

“The island, friends I’ve lost,” Olivia explains, the corner of her mouth barely lifted in a smile. “It’s hard not to dwell on it, sometimes.” 

“You know what you need? A distraction,” Thea says finally, “A night on the town, with a boy treating you nice. You haven’t been out at all since you got back.” 

“Oh, I don’t know, Speedy.” 

“What about Tommy? You two used to be a thing.” 

Ollie laughs, and the sound is so unfamiliar Thea feels strange just hearing it. “Tommy and I tried it once or twice, yes, but all that ever really amounted to was a lot of really great, casual sex.” She grins at the disgusted look on Thea’s face. “Besides, even if Tommy wasn’t completely gone for Laurel? He’s not really my type.” 

“Oh?” Thea raises a brow. “Then what would you call your ‘type?’ The way I remember it you were pretty much all over anything that moved.” 

“Guess I grew out of that,” Ollie says and there’s a wistful twist to the shape of her mouth. “But, well. Always had a thing for taller guys. Or at least men who don’t feel intimidated when I wear heels.” 

“I can see how that’d deter some fellows.” 

“Dark hair and eyes,” Olivia goes on, her eyes glazing over. She has someone particular in mind now, it’s obvious, the way her shoulders slope forward and she gets lost in her own head. “Strong. Well-built, you know, like in the military. But really, personality’s the important thing.” 

That starts ringing some bells. “Really.” Well, if that’s the way Olivia swings, Thea’s just going to have to be a good meddling little sister and give her a light push. 

\--

Olivia regrets having to drag Laurel into the Peter Declan case, but is relieved to see her friend handles herself spectacularly under pressure. Laurel’s a good attorney, and she’s doing a lot of good for Starling City. In the end, despite the near-catastrophe at Iron Heights, Olivia feels like she made a good choice.

She feels like she’s made an even better one when John Diggle finally accepts her offer.

\--

Thea is in the middle of getting ready for school when she walks in on Olivia and her bodyguard in the living room. The two are standing close together, and Thea gets the impression she’s just stepped in on a very private, intimate conversation. She debates walking right back out, leaving both of them unaware that she’d ever been there at all, but her instincts as a little sister inevitably win out. 

“So, your date went well, then?” Thea asks brightly while working on the tie of her school uniform. 

Olivia does an actual double take, and the sight of it is so amusing Thea has to stop herself from laughing out loud. “Come again?” 

“Your date,” Thea repeats, enunciating the “t” as clearly as she possibly can. “Your new bodyguard said you two went out to some diner in the Glades the other night. Well, ex-new bodyguard, anyway.” 

Olivia sputters, and Diggle seems more than a little amused at her expense. “I—that wasn’t a date!” 

“Really? I kind of assumed you two were, ah…” Thea hooks her index fingers together and holds them up. “You know.” 

Olivia has tilted her head back to stare up at the ceiling and looks like she’s praying to be smote where she stands. 

Diggle just smirks. “She’s not my type.” 

“Well, you’re hers,” Thea points out, raising a brow to accentuate her own teasing smile, “what was it, Ollie? ‘Tall, dark, and military?’” 

Digg’s brows shoot straight up to his hairline. 

“So not what I meant,” Ollie mutters. 

“Really, Ollie?” Thea challenges, still wearing a flirtatious smile, “Then what exactly did you mean?” 

“I was thinking of someone specific when I said that,” Ollie explains, “but it wasn’t Diggle. Sorry, Digg.” 

“None taken.” 

\--

_Slade stepped back into the fuselage after being gone without a word for several hours, soaked through to the bone but otherwise no worse for wear, and apparently completely oblivious to the fact that Olivia was about to lose her mind from worry._

_“Where have you been?” Olivia asked, a light thread of panic winding its way through her voice._

_Slade waved her off. “Not too far out. Just needed to find something.”_

_“Like what?” she asked as he started peeling off his gear, “The ocean? Because it kind of looks like you fell in it.”_

_“I did have to ford a river, yeah,” he said. He pulled his shirt and wife beater up over his head and Olivia felt her cheeks heat up._

_“I’ll get a fire started,” she blurted, turning away quickly, “so you, can, um, get warmed up.” Slade simply grunted in response, which Olivia accepted as an agreement. She set about gathering kindling from their stockpile and tried not to think about the long tan stretch of his stomach and the definition in his arms._

_She finally got the fire going and he sat down beside it in just his cargo pants, the orange glow of the flames playing off his bare skin. He was beautiful, she decided, and she wondered if that was just the months she’d spent with only him for company talking. She didn’t think it was, but regardless she hoped he couldn’t see how hard she was blushing in the low light. Just when the silence got to be a little too much and Olivia was considering retreating to her cot and pretending like the past twenty minutes had never happened, Slade made a soft noise and retrieved something from one of his pants’ pockets._

_“Here, kid,” he said and held out a handful of bright red-orange berries, “might have to dry them out first, but they should be safe to eat.”_

_She took them from him, rolled the ovoid fruits in her palm, and was pretty sure that pang in her chest wasn’t heartburn._

\--

“What brings you out here, Speedy?” Thea looks up from her seat on a lounge chair to see Olivia standing in the patio doorway, her shoulder pressed up against the frame. “Getting some sun?”

“I don’t know, just…pondering.” Thea twirls the hōzen beneath her fingers. “Sorry I kind of put you on the spot with the whole ‘dating your bodyguard’ thing.” 

“It’s…fine. I said something and you misinterpreted it.” Ollie shrugs. “It happens.” 

“I guess,” Thea says, lips pursed in thought. “I was just excited. You finally opened up and told me something, and I had to push for more.” Thea exhales. “It’s just, what you said before, about reconnecting.” She holds up the hōzen, her thumb running over the writing engraved on it. “Did you mean it?” 

“Of course I did.” Olivia hums, her mouth set in a line that means she’s thinking hard. “Do you remember my friend, the one who gave me this?” She taps at the clip in her hair. 

“Yeah.” 

“We met on the island,” Olivia whispers, her eyes going cloudy and unfocused, and somehow Thea knows she’s there again, trapped in Purgatory. “He taught me a lot of things, kept me alive.” Her voice drops even lower. “He was my best friend. And I think, somewhere along the way…”

“You fell in love with him.” 

“Yeah,” Olivia sighs. 

“You can talk to me about anything, you know that right?” Thea says. “I mean, boyfriends, the island, even if it’s just stupid stuff like what you had for lunch.” Her gaze drops down to her lap. “I miss you.” 

Thea is baring her heart here, and she’s not really sure what she expects Olivia to say. Part of her expects rejection, for Olivia’s walls to slam down like they always do, but that little hopeful part of her, that part that’s still twelve years old and still looks up to her big sister needs more. The silence drags on long between them and Thea is sick of silences, the way they eat into everything, the way they’ve dominated her life for the past five years and she just wants to fill them up with noise until they shatter and break. But Thea’s been alone, too, and if there’s one thing she’s learned it’s that she can’t fill up that space by herself. That she needs her family to step up and help her. 

Which makes it all the more meaningful when Olivia finally speaks up. “I’m not ready to talk about everything, and I don’t think I ever will be,” she says, “but if you want to ask questions, I’ll try to answer them.” 

And something in Thea’s chest, something she didn’t even realize was broken, _mends_ , just like that. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a combination graduation/birthday present to myself, there will be three new chapters this week. Not much of a present, but ah well!
> 
> This chapter (and quite possibly the next two) is probably going to hurt, but I promise, everything is going to get better. Eventually.

“I can’t believe you can actually speak _Russian_ though. You should teach me sometime.” Thea says, taking a bite out of another French fry. For a place in the Glades, the food here is actually really good. She takes back all of her initial skepticism from when Ollie had originally suggested it as the location of their lunch date. “Hey, do you know any French? Because there’s some girls at school? Who would totally be impressed by that.”

“There isn’t going to be a Christmas party, is there?” Ollie asks, and Thea almost gets whiplash from the abruptness of the subject change. 

“Um, no,” Thea says, her shoulders going tense, “I don’t think so.” 

“Why not?” Olivia asks, and Thea really, really does not want to answer this question, does not even want to think about answering this question. “Did you think I just wasn’t going to notice?” 

“Hey, Thea,” says a familiar voice. 

“Hi! Shane,” Thea says awkwardly, and feels eternally grateful for the interruption. The fact that the interruption happens to be the cute guy she’s been crushing on for a couple weeks now is just a bonus. 

“This is my sister, Olivia,” Thea introduces, and tries not to notice the way Shane not-so-subtly checks Olivia out. Yes, Ollie’s attractive; practically the definition of a gorgeous statuesque blonde; and Thea loves her to bits, but that does not mean she wants to compete for boyfriends with her. 

“Hullo, Thea’s sister,” Shane says pleasantly, and quite thankfully tears his eyes away from Ollie’s chest. “Bet the food on that island was better than the stuff they serve here, huh?” 

Thea winces. That was one of the first questions she’d asked Ollie under their new “sharing” policy. She’d figured it was a pretty safe one, and it had been. It had also been a little eye-opening in regards to what Olivia’s island stay had really been like. 

“You’d lose that bet,” Olivia says, her smile falling slightly stiff. 

And just like that, the air around their table becomes tense and awkward. Olivia is getting pretty good at that, Thea notices, and doesn’t really blame Shane when he decides to wrap this impromptu meeting up. “We’re heading out to the bay to hang out, if you wanna come.” 

“Thanks,” Thea says with a smile, “but I’m spending the day with my big sister.” 

“Another time, then,” he says reasonably, and walks off. 

Olivia raises an eyebrow. “Well, he was cute.” 

Thea feels her cheeks heat up and she is pretty sure she is as red as a tomato. “Shut up, Ollie.” 

“Cute, but a little airheaded,” Olivia goes on, “you could do better.” 

Thea frowns. Competing with Olivia for boyfriends is one thing, having them vetted by her is completely another. “You don’t even know him. Just…change the subject.” 

Which was the wrong thing to say. “Okay,” Ollie says meaningfully, “you were going to tell me why we aren’t having the _annual_ Christmas party.” 

Thea sighs. 

\--

_Olivia could never really say for sure when it happened._

_It was the little things, mostly. His laugh, the cockiness of his smile. The smoothness of his movements, both in and out of a fight. His gruff, but still somehow charming, manner. The way he was impossible to please, but when she finally did do something that managed to impress him he looked at her with so much pride in his dark eyes she thought her heart would burst._

_She didn’t know what to do about it._

_Sex was something she understood, something she was good at. She’d thought about it, sometimes, how his body would feel against hers, what kind of faces he’d make, what he’d sound like._

_But what she really wanted was to walk beside him, to hold him while he slept and whisper words in his ear, and she didn’t know what to do with that._

_Love wasn’t something she had much experience with beyond the familial._

_She’d thought about telling him, more than once. But Slade himself had made no secret about how he felt about relationships, called women a “distraction”, and Olivia wondered if he’d lost out in love before, if maybe the mother of his son had proved one such distraction._

_So she kept quiet, left her feelings behind in dreams that consumed her when she was awake and in murmured talks held over the fire pit with Shado._

_Even when he was hurt and his body was scarred and failing, she loved him and kept that love buried behind a smart mouth and bratty words, because if there was anything she’d gotten good at, it was keeping up appearances._

\--

Thea had been trying to make the most of Olivia’s impromptu holiday bash. The plan was simple. Invite cute boy to house, escort cute boy up to room, proceed to make out with aforementioned cute boy. Then, of course, Olivia had to go and develop super senses, show up, and promptly kick Shane out of the house and therefore Thea’s room.

“What are you doing!?” Thea panics, frantically pulling her dress back on. 

“Funny,” Olivia says, mouth pressed in a thin line, “I was about to ask you the same thing.” 

“ _I_ was about to land myself a cute guy,” Thea snaps. “Why couldn’t you have just stayed downstairs at your stupid party?” 

“I threw this party for you—”

“You threw this party for yourself,” Thea corrects, eyes hard. “You came down with the holiday blues, and you forced it on the rest of us. I didn’t want a party. I didn’t want to be _reminded_ that we’re not the family we used to be…”

“I’m trying, Thea…”

“That’s not good enough!” Thea shouts, and her mascara is definitely running now, but she doesn’t care. “You’re opening up a little and that’s fine, that’s great, but you’re not _listening to me_. Nothing is the same in our family and it never will be again, and nothing you do will change that.” 

“Thea, please,” Olivia begs. 

“You know what I think?” Thea says with so much venom she’s choking on it, “I think you’re too busy moping about your dead boyfriend to spend time with your family and friends, so you cover it up with big fancy parties to make us think you actually care. Well, guess what, Ollie. It’s not working on me.” 

She retreats into the bathroom and resolutely does not think about the broken expression on Olivia’s face. 

\--

Olivia watches the dark archer’s ultimatum with a grim mask drawn over her features. 

“Olivia,” Diggle says, “are you okay?” 

“Doesn’t matter if I’m okay, Diggle,” Olivia says, snapping off the TV, “people need me.” 

\--

Olivia is very much not okay. 

If she’s being honest with herself she really shouldn’t be out on the field at all right now. But she can still fake it with the best of them, crams all of her thoughts and feelings under a well-maintained façade of practical normalcy. She has a job to do and it’s easy to throw herself into it, in snapping the restraints off each of the hostages and herding them one by one out onto the roof. 

She should leave with them, should follow them up the stairs and make her escape there, should pull herself out of danger because she’s very much not at the top of her game. She doesn’t. Instead, she lets the archer in black call her out, lets him goad her into some kind of sick archery competition where the loser ends up dead. 

That’s her first mistake. 

She makes another and he knocks away her bow, plants two arrows in her back before she can even think about planting one in him. The police labelled this man a copycat but something about that word almost implies amateur, a kid picking up a bow and shooting a few arrows because they thought it would impress their friends. This archer moves with age and experience vastly superior to Olivia’s five years; he’s a trained killer, through and through. 

It doesn’t take him long to toss her flat on her back. She curls in a protective ball around her stomach, but her arms and knees aren’t a good enough shield against the barrage of kicks the archer aims at her ribs and the toe of his boot clips her more than once. He has her cornered, but he’s gloating, confident that he has her outmatched and overpowered. When he reaches for her hood she twists away from him, jams the point of a flechette between the bones of his hand and dances away like smoke through his fingers, because she hasn’t lived this long for nothing. 

She crawls out the first open window she finds and lands on a dumpster, which is fitting because she feels like something someone just took out to the trash. It takes more energy than it feels like it should, but she manages to pluck her cell phone out of her pocket and dial with one hand. 

She calls for help and lets her other hand settle gingerly in a protective arc below her aching ribs. 

\--

Diggle finds Olivia passed out in a back alley five minutes after she makes the call. 

He came prepared, with a duffle of street clothes hastily pulled from Olivia’s little hideout, and works methodically. The quiver is pulled off Olivia’s back, followed by the boots, gloves, and flechettes. They all replace the clothes in the duffle. The hood comes away next, and Diggle is in the process of unzipping the leather jacket when he feels it. 

“Shit,” Digg spits, pulling his hands back from Olivia’s jacket like he’s been stung, “shit.” 

That should definitely not be there. 

“You are by far the craziest bitch I have the misfortune of calling my friend,” Diggle snarls, whipping out his cell phone. He may have basic training in field medicine, but this isn’t something he can treat by himself. 

He dials 911 and hopes he can make this look like a standard mugging before the ambulance arrives. 

\--

_“Slade,” Olivia said. She kneeled in front of him, took his hand with one of her own and held the syringe of venom-green Mirakuru aloft in the other, waved it in front of his pain-filled eyes like a lifeline. “This…this could heal you, or it could kill you.”_

_“From the looks on all your faces,” Slade choked out, “I’m going to die anyway.”_

_None of them said anything. None of them needed to._

_“I’m sorry,” he whispered._

_“For what?” Olivia asked and ignored how thick her voice was, how her hands shook even when she squeezed his fingers against her palm._

_But then he pulled his hand away, turned his dark eyes to Shado, and when those words of love stumbled off his tongue and his heart stopped beating he left Olivia alone and empty-handed and feeling like her sternum had shattered and the pieces had embedded themselves in her lungs._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over a hundred kudos! Never really thought this story would get so much attention! I know I don't reply to comments that often, but I do read every single one and they always leave me excited to continue writing. :)
> 
> Thanks so much for all your support!

_Olivia didn’t even get time to grieve._

_Ivo blustered his way into the submarine like a thunderclap, loud and sudden and terrifying and with the threat of lightning in the form of his men just in front of him. In seconds he had the three women hustled up, one man training a gun at Sara and Shado until they dropped their weapons and another dragging Olivia roughly away from Slade’s body. The rest of the men searched the ship, and before long Ivo had the remainder of the Mirakuru in his arms, the dilapidated wooden box cradled close to his chest like a cherished toy. A wicked grin of accomplishment settled on his face and he pushed Sara, Shado, and Olivia up the submarine’s ladder with a pistol pointed at their backs._

_“Move faster,” he snarled and marched them through the trees, because it seemed victory hadn’t made his disposition any sweeter._

_“Anthony, if you ever cared about me at all, you would let us go,” Sara begged, voice quavering._

_Ivo laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “Oh, Sara, I do care for you.” He removed his pistol from its holster and pointed it at Shado’s head, the muzzle settling just between her eyes. “That’s why you get to live, and your little friends do not.”_

_He fired._

_Olivia screamed, the sound pulled violently from her throat, but it was too late. Shado fell to the ground in a shower of red and black, her body hitting the ground with a soft thud._

_Ivo turned slowly, calculatingly, and levelled the gun at Olivia._

_From behind them there was movement, a scuffle. Shouting. Ivo startled badly, his stance slipping. Another bang, and Olivia’s side lit up like it was on fire. She hit the ground just like Shado, only she was alive and in pain and she couldn’t breathe._

_The sky filled up with a keening sound and as her vision ebbed out Olivia couldn’t tell if the chilling wail was coming from her own lips or someone else’s._

\--

_In the confusion wrought by Slade’s sudden revival and reappearance, Sara scrambled over to Olivia’s side and reached out a hand to feel her pulse. It was still there, a panicked stuttering thrum beneath Sara’s fingers, but a thrum nonetheless that made Sara breathe a sigh of relief._

_Behind her Slade picked off the soldiers he could, Ivo and his remaining men taking off into the woods screaming and cursing. In their rush they’d left behind the box of Mirakuru. Small favors. Sara dismissed it for the time being and turned back to Olivia so that she could assess the damage. She’d had a little medical training from her time on the Amazo and she had done fairly well in her anatomy classes at school. She wasn’t incredibly confident in her abilities, but it was going to have to be enough._

_“She got lucky. I don’t think the bullet hit any organs or major arteries,” Sara murmured and pressed her hands into Olivia’s wound, painting her palms and the forest floor red. “But if we’re not careful she could go into shock.”_

_Slade didn’t acknowledge her. He had stopped fighting and was crouched on the ground, his arms wrapped around Shado’s body, his face buried in her dark hair._

_“Slade!” Sara screamed._

_He looked up. His face was still covered in blood._

_“I’m sorry, Slade, I’m so sorry,” Sara said, “but Olivia is still alive and she won’t be for much longer if we don’t do something to stop the bleeding so I really need you to stay with me, right now.”_

_“I…” Slade clutched at his head, grabbed fistfuls of his own hair. “Back in the fuselage. There’s a first aid kit.”_

_“Okay, good,” Sara said. “Hand me your shirt. We’ll make a bandage out of it.” She shifted her gaze to Shado’s body. “Do you think you can carry both of them?”_

_Slade remembered how easy it was, how weightless and flimsy the guards had felt in his hands when he picked them up and tossed them around like beanbags. “Yeah. Yeah I can.”_

\--

_Olivia was on fire._

_It was the only thing she was aware of, beyond the blurred shapes dancing in her vision and the bile that sat rancid in her mouth. She was in pain, a lot of it, and none of what she saw and felt made sense. So she tried not to choke on her own vomit and fell back into the numbness of sleep._

_She had dreams, sometimes, fleeting half-remembered ones that started as snatches of memory and bloomed into night terrors that scratched at the inside of her skull and left her writhing in pain. She remembered her father’s ocean-deep eyes, remembered Shado as a wailing banshee hacking her to pieces. Remembered the slimy feel of Wintergreen’s hands on her skin and Sara vanishing and reappearing and Slade’s voice gruff and low, reminding her that all people had demons._

_And she did have demons, she had so many, red and black ghosts flickering just beneath her eyelids and they were always crying, screaming, but she couldn’t hear them no matter how much she strained her ears to listen._

_The latest demon was kneeling at her bedside, his black-brown eyes two glimmering pieces of coal set in his scarred face. He was crying saline instead of blood. She leaned forward, tried to kiss the tears away but he pulled back to stare at her in shock._

_“Don’t cry,” she said, but the words were heavy in her mouth and he was crying again and there was nothing she could do to soothe his aches._

_There was only one person who could, and she wasn’t them._

\--

_She came back into lucidity lethargically, blinking away the haze of delirium still clinging to her lashes. She was back in the fuselage, she noticed, though she had no idea how she’d gotten there. Her whole body ached, the pain concentrated on her left side which was swaddled in what had to be every bandage and piece of tape they’d had left. She prodded the bandage and hissed, drawing the attention of the plane’s only other occupant._

_“Oh thank god,” Sara breathed, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “I thought your fever would never go down.”_

_“Sara?” Olivia asked, her tongue thick and dry in her mouth, “What’s—?”_

_“What do you remember?”_

_“I remember Ivo,” Olivia said clumsily, “and…Shado. And I think I was shot?”_

_“You were,” Sara confirmed. “In the left side. The wound wasn’t too bad after we stopped the bleeding, but a day in you started getting the chills really bad, and then you had nausea. By day two you were practically delirious.”_

_That, Olivia remembered. In pieces, anyway. “What about the…tea?” Yao Fei’s herbs should have cleared the fever and nausea right up._

_“Slade suggested that,” Sara admitted, “but for the first couple nights you couldn’t keep anything down long enough for it to work.”_

_Olivia blinked, stunned. “Slade? He was here.” She had half-believed him to be a figment of her imagination, a specter stirred up by her fever. Knowing he was really alive made her feel…relief, to some extent. Happiness. But most of that was still buried under the grief and bitterness she hadn’t exactly had time to come to terms with._

_“Yeah,” Sara said hesitantly. “The Mirakuru…it worked. But ever since we buried Shado he’s been acting…Well, you’d be a better judge than me. But he seems off. Ivo’s notes, they said that sometimes, the serum would mess with people’s heads. I think that might be happening to Slade.”_

_Olivia’s face was blank. “Where is he now?”_

_“Took off this morning, before you woke up,” Sara said, her voice tinged with regret, “I would have gone after him, but you were still…I’m sorry, Ollie. He’s gone.”_

\--

_They found him at Scylla, his hand’s buried in the missile launcher’s controls, ready to tear the Amazo to pieces._

_Olivia talked him down and hated herself for it, the way she drudged up Shado’s memory as a tool for manipulation. It reminded her keenly of the kid she used to be, the bratty college drop-out who roped her friends into crazy stunts, like stealing Sara’s dad’s service car for a joyride, or hopping onto her own father’s yacht for the hell of it. The kid who always got her way, always. And a part of her; a teeny-tiny, bitter, vindictive part of her locked deep in her brain; was almost glad Shado was gone. Glad Slade was as brokenhearted as Olivia was, that he was feeling what she had felt. Glad that now, maybe, she had a chance._

_It made her hate herself even more._

_Slade agreed to Olivia’s new plan and she wondered if she wasn’t as sick and twisted as Ivo was._

\--

_It took her days and days, but Olivia finally managed to complete her makeshift archery course without missing a single target._

_It didn’t feel as satisfying as she thought it would._

_Slade was waiting at the end of the course, a somber light in his eyes and a steely set to his mouth._

_“Shado would be proud of you, kid,” he said._

_Something in his voice, the weight of it, how it sounded angry and broken, twisted around in Olivia’s gut and made her feel like she was shattering all over again. “I know.”_


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of people called this relatively early, but hey, here’s that reveal you’ve all been waiting for.

The Queen Christmas party has more or less wound down now, guests trickling out of the mansion one by one now that their hosts have scattered to the four winds. It almost makes Thea laugh: for all her bluster about attending the party and spending time with her family, Ollie sure ditched it awfully quick.

Thea is still angry about the little confrontation they had and she’s moping about it, barely stepping out of her room since Ollie’s departure. Shane is embarrassed enough about earlier that he’s refusing to return Thea’s texts, which really just adds another layer of frustration to this whole mess. Big sisters are infuriating and sometimes Thea wishes she had a brother instead.

When her mother pops into her room, wearing a coat and looking frantic, Thea also wishes she had family members that wouldn’t just barge into her room uninvited.

“Mom!” Thea complains. “Doesn’t anyone in this house know what a closed door means?” 

“Up, Thea,” Moira says sternly, a hint of hysteria bleeding into her voice, and Thea feels her stomach drop out, “your sister’s in the hospital.”

\--

_School was never one of Olivia’s strong suits, and while she liked literature to an extent she found it hard to excel at things she didn’t care for. The Odyssey, yes, but that particular tale had pinged with her on a level she never understood until she found herself trapped on an island with death on all sides._

_She still found herself thinking about quotes on occasion. The one that continually came to mind during their attack on the Amazo would have been pretty damn fitting if she could remember all of it._

_Something about mice making plans._

_To a point, their plan went off without a hitch. Olivia was captured and given the truth serum, as planned. Sara and Slade parachuted their way to the boat, as planned. They released the prisoners, mostly as planned._

_The spanner in the works came in the form Anthony Ivo putting a bullet in Slade’s right eye._

_It didn’t kill him._

_It did, however, push him into a blood rage._

_And when he turned to Olivia, right eye closed with blood oozing from beneath the lid, she knew everything was about to go horribly, terribly wrong._

\--

“Moira, Thea,” Doctor Lam greets easily, “good to see you again, although I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“What happened?” Moira demands. 

“Your head of security, a Mister…ah, Diggle?” Doctor Lam looks to Moira for confirmation, and continues at her nod, “Caught up to her in an alleyway outside of her club. She was already unconscious. Her attacker apparently took her purse and ran off. Mr. Diggle already left his statement with the police, although they’ll probably want to talk with Olivia when she wakes up.

The injuries themselves are extensive…Several bruised ribs, contusions on her face and arms, and a concussion.”

“Oh, Ollie…” Thea breathes, and she can feel tears prickling in her eyes.

The doctor hesitates. “There is something else, Mrs. Queen. A…complication. I noticed it back during your daughter’s initial check-up, just after she returned to the states. At the time, she asked me to keep it quiet, but given the circumstances I believe this extends past the limits of confidentiality.”

“Well? What was it?” Moira demands.

“During Olivia’s last visit, blood tests showed there were elevated amounts of hCG in her bloodstream, which means—”

“She was pregnant.”

“—yes.” Doctor Lam sighs. “My impression was that the numbers suggested a miscarriage, or perhaps the aftermaths of a stillbirth. I recommended that your daughter look into trauma and grief counselling, but she turned it down.”

“My god,” Moira breathes, sinking down into a chair.

“So wait, wait,” Thea says hurriedly, “Ollie’s been back for three months. Why are you telling us this now?”

“Because I was wrong,” the doctor says sternly, placing a manila folder on the table in front of the Queens. “Olivia’s blood work wasn’t displaying signs of a miscarriage at all.”

With shaky hands, Moira reaches out and flips the folder open. There, in glaring black and white, is an ultrasound photo.

“Typically, hCG levels during pregnancy vary from woman to woman,” Doctor Lam tries to explain as both of the Queens’ eyes widen and Thea’s jaw practically drops, “Olivia’s just happened to be lower than average. Combine that with her scars and the amount of trauma her body’s been through, well…you can see why I originally thought miscarriage.” He reaches out to tap a finger against the photo on the table. “Based on the size and development of the fetus, we can estimate your daughter conceived somewhere between three and six weeks before she arrived back in Starling.”

“Are you telling me my baby,” Moira starts, her voice clipped and sharp like steel arrowheads, “my little girl, came back from that godforsaken island _pregnant_ and _no one knew about it?_ ”

“Only Olivia could say for certain,” Doctor Lam says, “but I suspect that the reason she kept quiet is because the circumstances surrounding conception were…traumatic.”

“Traumatic?”

“I’m saying you need to be prepared for the possibility that your daughter was forced, Mrs. Queen,” the doctor clarifies gently. He pats Moira once on the shoulder consolingly. “I’ll let the two of you know when Olivia wakes up.”

With that, Doctor Lam exits.

Thea watches her mother take a shuddering breath and bury her face in her hands. “I don’t know what to do. If she would have just _talked_ to us about that damn island..!”

_But she did talk to me_ , Thea thinks, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, and remembers conversations that suddenly make so much sense. _Maybe I just needed to listen._

\--

_It was luck that let Olivia beat Slade, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like a death sentence, the boat falling to pieces around them, Sara already lost to the rushing water. They were both losers here, even if one of them was pinned to the floor and the other stood over him placidly like an avatar of justice, an arrow in one hand and a cure in the other._

_“Why? Why couldn’t you have died instead of her?” he spat._

_Olivia watched him struggle under the debris and tried to feel angry, tried to feel heartbroken and bitter, tried to feel anything but the burnt-out exhaustion that had settled deep in her bones. “I’ve been wondering the same thing,” she said and plunged the needle of the syringe into his neck._

\--

Olivia wakes up not long after.

She looks awful, bruises and cuts all over her face. But that’s not what Thea’s eyes settle on.

The thin cotton of Olivia’s hospital get-up makes the baby bump obvious. It is barely a bump, really, just a little bit of extra weight around her middle, but Thea still can’t believe she missed it for so long. Three months. Three months Olivia’s been back and she’s been pregnant that whole time.

Just another secret she wouldn’t trust Thea with.

“Hey,” Olivia says, smiling thinly, “guess the uh, cat’s out of the bag, huh?”

“Olivia, sweetheart,” Moira sighs, “why didn’t you say anything? I thought you were trying to be more responsible, and you know you can come to us for any reason.”

The smile, weak as it was, falls right off Olivia’s face, and Thea recognizes that expression. That’s the expression Ollie wore when Thea confronted her about the scars, when Ollie tried to mend bridges after the hairclip disaster, when Thea chewed Ollie out at the Christmas party. It’s the kind of expression that means Olivia is somewhere very far away.

The tension breaks when Moira’s cell phone rings.

Moira glances at the number on screen and her eyes widen fractionally. “I’m sorry, I have to take this,” she murmurs, and those are definitely tears in her eyes now.

“Mom—!” Thea protests, but Moira is already up and moving out of the room, heels clacking at a manic pace. 

Thea huffs. “The woman finds out she’s going to be a grandmother and suddenly she’s got somewhere better to be?”

“It’s alright,” Olivia says absently, “as I understand it a lot of people have that feeling about me lately.”

Thea chooses to ignore that, for the moment. “Why keep it a secret?”

Olivia raises an eyebrow. “Well, considering the last time I told you a secret you threw it back in my face?”

Thea’s face flushes hot with shame. “Look, what I said…I was being a bitch.”

Olivia’s smile comes back, small and wry. “A little bit. But to be fair, so was I.”

Thea smiles back in return. “So?” 

“It wasn’t a secret, not really. I would have told you, eventually. But I had plans, things I needed to do,” Ollie says, voice soft. “It was easier just…to pretend it wasn’t happening, to keep moving because otherwise I’d just drown and I’ve spent too long trying to—” 

She falls quiet and Thea sits in silence with her, marveling at the strength of this woman she has the privilege of claiming as a sister and as a role model. If she ever needed another reason to admire Olivia, this would be it. 

“ _Shēngcún_ ,” Olivia says suddenly. 

Thea frowns at her. “What?” 

“It means survive. On the island, it was the very first lesson I learned.” She chuckles humorlessly. “I guess at some point, I was so busy surviving I forgot how to just live.” 

“Mom thinks it was rape,” Thea says carefully, “but it wasn’t. Was it?” 

Ollie hums. “No. It wasn’t.” 

“Your friend, the one who wasn’t very sentimental. That was him?” 

“Yeah.” Ollie’s smile is heartbreaking. “That was him.” 

\--

_Olivia didn’t trust Waller, didn’t even like the woman in the slightest. But Amanda had been responsible for making sure both Olivia and Slade arrived in Hong Kong in one piece, and while Olivia would have liked nothing more than to go home to Starling she could handle working a few covert operations until then. No matter how under duress they happened to be._

_Slade had, as far as Olivia could tell, made a full recovery from the Mirakuru, although his eye was still missing and he was still jagged around the edges like a vase that had been broken and put back together wrong. They didn’t talk about it, what happened on the Amazo, though Slade had apologized in his own gruff, wordless way. At night in their shared hotel rooms they would mourn for Shado, Sara, and camaraderie lost. They trusted each other in the field but in a personal capacity there was something heavy hanging in the air between them, something dark and unspeakable and tinged venom-green._

_It happened after one of their first jobs for A.R.G.U.S._

_“You’re afraid of me, now,” Slade said, fingers clenched tight around the drink in his hands._

_“I’ve always been afraid of you. You’re a scary man,” Olivia tried to joke._

_“Not like this,” Slade denied, shoving the drink away from him. “I hurt you. Shado…Shado never would’ve forgiven me.”_

_He reached out to touch her and she flinched away from his hand and his words and the tortured expression that passed over his face._

_“Are we ever going to get past this, kid?” he asked._

_“I don’t know,” she said and took a step towards him, “you tell me.”_

_He kissed her. But it wasn’t at all how she pictured it, far removed from the gentle press of lips and passionate movements she had allowed into her dreams. Instead his mouth attacked hers with bruising pressure and his hands left marks on her sides where he gripped her too roughly. The words he breathed into her ear were said in anger, not affection, and grief was strong in his every touch, because she wasn’t who he wanted, not really. Everything about this was wrong wrong wrong but she couldn’t find it in herself to tell him to stop._

_This wasn’t how she wanted it. But she would take it anyway._


	10. Chapter 10

Laurel stops by for a visit the day after Olivia gets the go-ahead to return home from the hospital.

“Oh wow. I’d heard, from your mom and Thea, but…” Laurel smiles. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” Olivia smiles back weakly. “Could have been better timing, though.”

“Ah, right…Walter. I’m so sorry.”

“We’re trying to stay optimistic, but…my mother’s pretty upset.” Not that Olivia can really blame her. It’s the second time Moira’s lost a husband in five years.

“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Laurel assures, though her expression is less confident, “it’s only been a few days.” She decides to tactfully change the subject. “How far along are you?”

“Eighteen weeks, give or take.”

She can practically see the gears turning as Laurel counts backwards. “Ollie, that’s…that’s before you came back.”

Olivia inclines her head in allowance.

“So,” Laurel says slowly, “Daddy is…”

“No one you’ve ever met,” Olivia confirms. Or ever will.

Thankfully, Laurel doesn’t push. “It makes a lot of sense, now. What you were saying that first week you were back.”

“Yeah?”

“You realize, of course,” Laurel says with a grin, “that once your ribs are better I am dragging you out shopping for baby clothes.”

Olivia laughs and winces when the movement pulls at her bruised ribs. “Sure. But you should know I already caught Thea looking up onesies online.”

“Well then we’ll just have to drag her with.”

“It’s a date,” Olivia says, and for the first time she feels like she might not fail completely at this motherhood thing. After all, she has a lot of support at her back.

\--

Thea finds Olivia in the lounge. She’s surprised to see her sister up and about so soon, but she’s more surprised to find her playing with the old dartboard on the wall that hasn’t been used since before their father was still around. Olivia’s throws are casual, none of them landing anywhere close to the center. Thea waits until the older Queen sister is retrieving the darts from the board before she interrupts.

“Let me try,” Thea insists.

“Why not.” Ollie hands Thea a couple of darts, an amused expression on her face. “Don’t be surprised if you miss, though. It’s harder than it looks.”

Thea ignores her and steps up to the throwing line, one dart pinched between her fingers. She doesn’t overthink it, just steps forward and lets the dart fly from her hand.

The dart hits the board neatly just to the right of the bull’s eye.

“Huh,” Ollie says, leaning forward to inspect the dart’s position on the board. “Nice aim.”

“Is this something you do a lot?” Thea asks, a smirk creeping across her lips, “Throwing sharp things at walls?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Ollie says offhand as she pulls the dart back out of the cork. “Up for a little competition?”

“Am I?” Thea asks with a grin, eyes bright. “What should the reward be?”

Olivia idly taps the non-pointed end of the dart against her chin. “Hmm. How ‘bout…if you win, I won’t bother you about your poor choices in men anymore.”

Thea makes a pleased hum. That would be nice. “And if you win?”

“And if I win, you let me teach you self-defense.”

Thea scoffs. “You don’t know any self-defense.”

“Oh yeah?” Ollie asks, her smile teasing. “Try and hit me.”

“I’m not going to hit you; you’re pregnant.”

“I’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Thea glares but complies, swinging her arm at Olivia’s shoulder. Olivia deftly blocks the blow, snagging Thea’s wrist and bending back her arm.

“Ow, ow, okay I give,” Thea whines. When Olivia lets go, Thea cradles the wrist in her other hand. “Wow, when’d you go and get a kung fu death grip?”

“Five years on an island will do that to you,” Olivia remarks idly, and the fact she’s joking about it now, that this is something the two of them can sort of talk about, puts a warmth in Thea’s chest. “Now, do we have a deal?”

“I don’t know, are we agreeing not to cheat?”

“That we are. So?”

“Deal,” Thea says firmly, holding up her own darts.

There are six darts total between them and they take turns throwing. Olivia lands one dead in the middle, which is somewhat discouraging, but her other two wind up in the triangular section just above the bull’s eye. Thea feels oddly pleased when two of her darts land near the center.

“One hundred and seventy to one hundred and ten,” Olivia counts out, “looks like I win.”

“Now hold up,” Thea protests. Something must be wrong with Olivia’s eyes because Thea totally just kicked her butt at darts. “I got more bull’s eyes than you did.”

“No, you got two in the outer ring,” Olivia explains, “that’s only twenty-five points apiece. The section I got in the triple ring is worth sixty apiece.”

“What? That’s not fair I didn’t know that.”

“Those are the rules, Speedy,” Olivia says with an apologetic shrug, which is slightly off-put by the pleased smile on her lips.

“But I didn’t know those were the rules,” Thea complains. “You didn’t explain them.”

“Thought you knew.”

“Well, obviously I didn’t,” Thea says sourly.

“Then how about we call it a tie and we both win,” Ollie offers, “I stop bothering you about boys and you still agree to self-defense training.”

It’s still not fair, but it really couldn’t hurt. “Fine.”

“Good,” Ollie says, and she has that slight smile on her face that makes Thea feel like she just got played, big time. “I’m waking you up at five.”

\--

_Olivia and Slade had been partnered together for about six months when one of their missions took them to Russia._

_Coincidentally, it also took them to Anatoli Knyazev._

_As it turned out, Anatoli had gotten involved in a deal with Slade and Olivia’s target. A deal that had gone decidedly sour._

_Olivia didn’t think twice before planting three arrows in a line over the target’s heart._

\--

“Heard about your bet with Thea,” Digg mentions that night while they’re in the command center. Olivia is not actively playing vigilante at the moment, obviously, but the basement under her father’s old factory is still one of her favorite places to be. A place to hide away from the world and think.

“I’d like it if she could defend herself. Especially since, well,” Olivia gestures at herself, “I’m kind of out of the game for a little while. May need your help training with her, if that’s alright with you.”

Diggle nods, watching carefully as Olivia retrieves her hood from its hiding place. His brows furrow in a displeased knot. “You’re not planning on going out in that, are you?”

“The city’s still in trouble, Diggle.”

“And you’re not exactly in a position to save it,” Diggle argues. “It’s putting yourself, your _baby_ , in danger, and I can’t let you do that, Olivia.”

“Well,” Olivia smiles beatifically and holds out the green fabric in her hands, “then how do you feel about being the one under the hood for a change?”

\--

_“Olivia Queen!” Anatoli said with a grin, quickly enveloping her in a bear hug. “It is good to see you again. Glad to see you are not dead.”_

_“Good to see you, too, Anatoli,” Olivia murmured, a smile teasing at her lips as she returned the embrace. “And I’m glad I’m not dead as well.”_

_Anatoli released her and turned to face Slade, one hand extended in hesitant greeting. “Wish I could say it is good to see you, too, but, well.” He made a face. “Frankly, you still give me nightmares.”_

_Slade shrugged but took Anatoli’s hand, shaking it firmly. “Can’t say I blame you.”_

_“He’s cured, Anatoli,” Olivia said in Slade’s defense, even while her eyes held something scarred in their blue depths, “you don’t have to worry.”_

_“I will have to take your word on it. Now come in, come in,”Anatoli said, gesturing at the door, “I believe I owe you two favors now, but who is counting, eh?”_

\--

Olivia makes good on her promise to wake Thea up at five in the morning every day. Thea isn’t really sure how she pulls it off, exactly, considering how late Ollie stays up at nights. She figures her big sister must end up taking a lot of naps during the day, or something.

Nevertheless, there Ollie is, bright and early, with a box of bagels in one hand and coffee in the other.

“Up and at ‘em, Speedy, we got training to do.”

“Drill sergeant,” Thea grumbles.

“Hardly. Trust me, I know a guy.” Olivia falters. “Knew a guy.”

Thea straightens up and reaches out, half for the box of bagels and half to offer Ollie a lifeline to pull her out of whatever dark place she just slipped into. It’s the only way Thea knows how to deal with those lapses: smooth things over and reach in before Ollie falls somewhere Thea can’t follow. “Okay, what’s the plan? Running? Boxing? Kicking me repeatedly while I’m down?”

That seems to do the trick, fortunately, because Olivia’s face seems to take on a half determined, half amused, half demented expression and okay, maybe math isn’t Thea’s strong suit, but to her that face just _screams_ drill sergeant. “You and I are going to do some stretches, I think. Then I’ll time you while you run a lap around the mansion.”

“That really doesn’t sound so bad…”

“And then, after that, I think Digg and I are going to show you how to spar.”

“Ooh.” She can feel the bruises already.

\--

_Anatoli was the one who placed the initiation star over Olivia’s left breast, his hand careful and practiced as the needle bit into her skin. It was nowhere close to the pain of her first tattoo, the rending pain on her shoulder left by the red dragon there._

_Slade watched the progress of the second tattoo much the same way he had the first, dark eyes glittering, but instead of anger and grief his face was twisted in regret._

_She reached for his hand, squeezed his fingers in her palm and tried to let him know she forgave him._

\--

Olivia ends up arriving at the obstetrician for her twenty week scan by herself, Diggle having opted to stay out in the car in case of emergency. Not that she would have minded if he wanted to come in, but Digg protested, claiming he felt like he would be intruding. Olivia can’t really blame him. She doubts she would have been able to shake the feeling that someone else should’ve been there in Digg’s stead.

She decides not to dwell on that thought.

“Olivia Queen?” Olivia looks up to see a nurse in pink scrubs waiting at an open door. Several of the other patients in the waiting room are looking up now, having recognized her name if not her face. It’s obvious why she’s here, especially now that she’s showing. “Anyone accompanying you today, Miss Queen?” the nurse asks sympathetically.

Olivia starts to shake her head but Thea chooses that moment to rush into the doctor’s office in a burst of color and sound.

“Ahhh, wait, wait, I’m here,” she says, visibly flustered and out of breath. She gives Olivia a wide smile. “You didn’t think I was gonna miss meeting my niece or nephew did you?”

“No Mom today?”

“No.” Thea’s face falls. “I tried to get her out of bed, Ollie, I really did, but…”

“It’s…” Olivia stutters out a breath. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not,” Thea says firmly and offers Olivia her arm, “now we are going to go meet your baby and when Mom asks us for pictures later we’ll tell her she has to take us out to dinner first.”

Olivia laughs and gladly links arms with her little sister. “Sounds like a plan.”

\--

_“Just called in my report to Waller,” Slade announced, “she wants us to stick around a little while. See if we can’t uncover who the target was working for.”_

_“That’s new. Maybe I can learn some more Russian,” Olivia mused. Slade wouldn’t be surprised if she picked it up quickly. She had with Mandarin, after all._

_“At least you’re enjoying yourself,” Slade scoffed. “Your little mobster friend doesn’t think too highly of me.”_

_“Hey,” she protested, “if he says something to you, tell me. You’re cured, he knows that. You’re not dangerous anymore.”_

_He raised a brow at her. “I don’t know about that, kid.”_

_“Okay,” Olivia amended graciously, “you’re not dangerous to me.”_

_She moved to cup a hand around his cheek, a gesture more comforting and more intimate than anything they’d really done before. There had been kisses, sure, but those had been angry, messy things ripped out of them in the moment of frantic, stress-relieving sex because when it came down to it they were just two broken people picking at each other’s jagged edges and waiting to get cut. He panicked, snagged her wrist before her palm could make contact with his skin._

_The look on her face was one he had never wanted to see again. It was an expression she’d made a lot, back on the boat._

_He released her. “I’m sorry, kid,” he said, voice low._

_“No, it’s…” Her voice hiccupped. “It’s fine.” She tried for a smile, but it didn’t look quite right on her face. “I’ll just go call in my own report.”_

_She left and a part of him felt like a monster all over again._

\--

The ultrasound technician slides the wand across Olivia’s stomach. “Did you want to know the gender?”

Olivia sucks in a breath. She can almost feel Thea nodding enthusiastically beside her. “Yes.”

“Looks like…” The wand moves again. “Congratulations, Miss Queen, you’re having a son.” 

Olivia watches the black and white picture move onscreen, lets the sound of a tiny heartbeat fill her ears and squeezes Thea’s hand in hers. A son. She could get used to that.

\--

_Somehow, Anatoli and Slade wind up alone with a bottle of vodka between them._

_And somehow, the topic of conversation ends up being Olivia._

_“Most of the organization,” Anatoli flapped his hand demonstratively, “they are not so keen on having a woman in such a high position. She will have to fight for respect. Earn it.” The lines of his face softened, lips pulled into a fond grin. “I believe she can.”_

_Something about the expression on Anatoli’s face soured in Slade’s gut, and he downed the shot of vodka in his hand. “She earned mine.” Not an easy task. Not at all. And yet the kid kept finding some way to surprise him. “That kid…She can do just about anything she puts her mind to.”_

_“A remarkable woman,” Anatoli agreed, raising an eyebrow at Slade, “makes you wonder.”_

_Slade didn’t like his tone. “About what?”_

_“She abandoned her freedom to save you and her blonde friend,” Anatoli pointed out, “with a very high chance for failure. Olivia Queen is a loyal creature. If she would save the life of a man whose last name she cannot even pronounce—twice, even—well. It is a wonder she gives that loyalty to you.” He smiled. “You are a lucky man.”_

_“Had nothing to do with me, mate,” Slade said. “She was on that boat for Sara. Just Sara.”_

_“I do not believe that. And neither do you.”_

_“She’s a good kid,” Slade grunted. “That’s all.”_

_“And you are not,” Anatoli deduced, “good, that is.”_

_“No.” He had felt that way for a long time, but after what happened on Lian Yu, he couldn’t deny there was no shaking the darkness that had seeped into his veins._

_“Men like us,_ Господин _Wilson, we are not meant to be good men,” Anatoli said sagely, “Persons like Olivia, they take the bad and make something good out of it.” He raised a brow at Slade. “If I were you, I would have gone after that woman ages ago.”_

_“What makes you think I haven’t?”_

_Anatoli just looked at him._

_“It’s fine,” Slade growled, “we’re fine. We’ve been…it’s been almost a year now. We’re good enough. Content.”_

_“If you are so ‘content’ together,” Anatoli asked archly, “why does she look like she is breaking in two whenever you turn the other way?”_

\--

“That’s way too fancy,” Olivia says. She and Thea are spread out on the couch, peering at the laptop settled on Thea’s knees, a news program they’ve both since forgotten about playing on the TV. “He’s a baby; he’s not going to be going to any parties.”

“Well, knowing our family and friends, he might,” Thea points out. 

Olivia just gives her a look.

“What about this one?” Thea asks hurriedly, clicking on another little image to enlarge it.

Olivia hums, brows furrowed. “Do they have it in green?”

“What is with you and green?”

“It’s a good color,” Olivia defends. Thea obligingly brings up the green version of the pajamas on screen and Olivia nods. “Perfect. Though at the rate we’re going I think he’s probably going to outgrow everything before he gets to wear it all.”

Thea pouts. “They’re all so cute, though.”

“Just…dial it back a bit.”

“Fine,” Thea complies with a huff, “but rest assured, what I do pick out for this baby is going to leave him so sharply dressed all the girls will swoon over him.”

Olivia makes a face torn between shock, horror, and amusement. “…Speedy.”

“What?”

“Please don’t pimp out my unborn child. It’s weird.”

“Well, when you put it that way, yeah, kinda,” Thea allows. She frowns a little. This moment is nice, with Olivia finally joking and laughing beside her, but there’s still something missing. Two somethings. Maybe even three somethings. “I miss Walter.”

“I know.”

“He didn’t even get to find out about your baby,” Thea’s breath hitches and she will not cry she will not, “and he would’ve been so excited, and happy for you. I know you didn’t really talk to him very much but he loves you, you know, and me. He loves all of us.”

“I know, Speedy.”

“And maybe if he were here Mom would be here, too,” Thea goes on, “instead of up in her room hiding from everybody. I wish Walter were here. And Dad. And your Hairclip Guy.” Her face definitely feels wet now. It makes her feel impossibly small. “Why does everyone always leave?”

Thea isn’t really sure when Ollie wound an arm around her shoulders, but the weight of it is comforting. Warm. “I don’t know, Speedy. I don’t know.”

All Thea can do is beg Walter to come back, safe and somewhat whole. Just like she did for Ollie. It worked then. She can only hope it works now.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a ton of trouble with this chapter and I'm not even really sure why. Sorry for the wait!

“Looks like someone snapped some pictures of you at the ob/gyn,” Thea announces from where she’s sprawled out on the couch, computer in her lap.

“Oh, no,” Olivia says with a grimace, “really?” 

“It’s all over Twitter right now,” Thea goes on, “there’s a tag trending where people try to guess who the father is.” 

Olivia’s face is twisted in disgust and agony and Thea really can’t blame her. The media does go overboard with the Queens sometimes. “For crying out…”

“The most popular guess is Tommy,” Thea adds helpfully. 

“Give me that,” Olivia demands and practically rips the computer out of Thea’s hands. She types rapidly for a moment, fingers furiously pounding the keys, then stops to frown at the screen. “Why won’t it let me write more.” 

“Because you can only use a hundred and forty characters at a time,” Thea says with a laugh, taking the laptop back. “Seriously, you’ve been back five months and you still don’t know how Twitter works?” 

Olivia huffs. “I didn’t think it was important.” 

“So the Kardashians are important but social networks aren’t?” 

“Speedy.” 

Thea hovers over the backspace key, her eyes trailing over Olivia’s half-written message. “And normally you’re so concise. You really let loose, didn’t you?” 

“It’s none of their business who my baby’s father is.” 

“So just ignore ‘em,” Thea suggests reasonably. “Or better yet, you can tell me his name, and then I can taunt the Internet with the fact I know and they don’t.” 

“How about no.” 

It was a worth a try. Thea pouts anyway. “You tell me stories sometimes but you never tell me anything concrete. _Details_ , Ollie. I need them.” 

“Okay.” Ollie purses her lips in thought. “Well, he was grumpy as hell, and he had the gravelliest voice I have ever heard. Does that help?” 

It really doesn’t. “A name, Ollie. I need a name.” 

“What if I just give you his initials?” Olivia offers. 

“Fine.” 

“First name starts with an ‘S’,” Olivia reveals and Thea’s mind starts reeling with possibilities, “last name starts with a ‘W’.” 

The only name coming to mind is some skateboarder Thea saw on TV once years back which is so far out of the realm of possibility it’s laughable. “Your man got a middle name?” 

Ollie’s smile is wry. “You know, I never thought to ask.” 

Thea pulls up the Twitter feed again and scrolls through the list of names. “There’s nothing really even close on here, so I think you’re safe. The stuff these people come up with, though.” Thea snorts. “Some of them are even putting their own names on, the bunch of attention-mongers. Hey, this one fits, ‘Slade Wilson?’” 

Olivia stills, the smile sliding smoothly off her face. 

Thea frowns. “Ollie?” 

“Who posted that?” Olivia demands, barely-contained rage etched in every tense line of her face. 

“I don’t know, it’s just—” Olivia liberates Thea of her laptop again, practically runs off with it, “—Ollie, what..?” 

“Later, Speedy,” Olivia promises, “later.” 

\--

_Embarrassingly, it was Amanda Waller that planted the idea in Olivia’s head in the first place._

_All the loose ends in Russia as far as ARGUS was concerned had been tied up, and Slade and Olivia had taken to treating one another with a sort of casualness that was so forced Olivia felt uneasy and unable to relax, tension settling sick and tight in her shoulders. She knew she had overstepped her bounds, broken some rule that had gone unspoken between them and she wasn’t sure what to do about it._

_She needed something else to focus on. Amanda simply provided an option._

_“I do have some advice for you,” Waller said toward the tail-end of one of Olivia’s weekly reporting sessions._

_Olivia scoffed. “Not interested.”_

_“Humor me, then,” Waller said scathingly. “I am aware that Queen Consolidated has a subsidiary in Moscow. I would recommend you not make contact with them while you are there.”_

_“It hadn’t even crossed my mind,” Olivia said honestly._

_“Good. I’ll be in touch once we have the details on your next assignment.” The dial tone rang in Olivia’s ear. Amanda wasn’t really one for pleasantries, Olivia had learned._

_Contacting Queen Consolidated wasn’t something Olivia had considered, she’d been honest about that. But now that the idea had been planted in her head, her mind clung to it, to her father’s dying words and the worn-out little book she still carried with her almost three years and several brushes with death later._

_Cracking the code beneath that beaten cover…that thought had some definite appeal._

\--

“Hello Felicity,” Olivia greets without preamble, Thea’s laptop snug under her arm, “I have a new job for you.” 

“This isn’t another scavenger hunt, is it? Because you still owe me a bottle of wine for the last one.” 

“No,” Olivia says impatiently. She doesn’t even bother crafting an overelaborate lie, just opens the laptop and sets it in front of Felicity. “One of my…friends…put the name of my baby’s father up online against my wishes and I would very much like to know which one.” 

“That almost sounded believable that time,” Felicity jokes. 

“That’s because it was the truth.” 

“Ooooh.” Felicity bites her lip. “Um, let me just start tracking that, for you.” 

Olivia gives her a slight quirk of the lips that probably should be comforting but mostly comes across as a thinly-veiled threat pretending to be a smile. “That would be appreciated, thanks.” 

Felicity gulps and starts tapping at the keyboard with renewed purpose. Tracing the IP address the tweet was made from is basically child’s play. The surprising part is who the address belongs to. 

The IT expert pulls the organization’s web site onscreen and tilts the monitor in her boss’s direction. “Do you, uh, have friends, in the government?” Felicity asks awkwardly. 

Olivia stares at the logo onscreen and feels her blood start to boil. “No,” she says simply, “I don’t.” 

\--

_Olivia returned to the hotel room and found Slade already there, spread out on the bed with his suit jacket and tie tossed over the back of a chair._

_She would never get used to seeing him in suits._

_“Kid,” he greeted, pulling himself up into a sitting position, “we need to talk.”_

_She raised an eyebrow. “No good came out of those words, ever.”_

_He laughed, rich and full. Two and a half years she’d known him and that sound still pinched something in her gut. “Never thought I’d be saying ‘em, but here we are.” He patted the empty space on the mattress beside him. “Sit.”_

_The word was less suggestion and more command. Olivia deliberately disobeyed it, took a step backward and away._

_Slade lurched after her, snagged her by the waist and dragged her bodily into his lap. She went limp in his arms, collapsed against him while he held her._

_“I’m sorry,” he said._

_“Why?” she asked, low and wounded. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one…I’m the one who…” The one who kept taking more than she really deserved. The one who was weak and bitter and broken playing at being healthy and whole. The one who was poison._

_He held her more tightly._

_“I don’t get why you put up with me,” she admitted, “I ruined you.”_

_“Not true, kid,” Slade mumbled into her hair, “and even if you did, you forget.” He lifted a hand to her ear and let his fingers catch on her blonde tresses. “You built me up again, too.”_

_Olivia trailed a hand down his arm, her fingertips lingering on his bicep where the hole from Fyers’ bullet used to be. “I never would have made it without you, you know.” She let go of him, backed off like his skin would set her on fire if she kept contact too long. “Would…would you mind helping me with something?”_

_Something in his eye flickered, too fast for her to catch what it was. “Sure, kid. Ask away.”_

_“My father’s company has a branch here in Russia,” Olivia explained, “and I want to pay it a visit.”_

_Slade raised a brow. “And what? Call your family and say hello?”_

_“No, at least not yet.” Olivia sighed. “I don’t know how much longer Waller’s going to keep us on her leash. It wouldn’t be fair to them if…”_

_Slade easily picked up on what she wasn’t saying and tactfully left well enough alone. “What’s our goal then?”_

_Olivia’s heart warmed dangerously. “My father said some things before he…died. Some things I’d like answers to. I’m hoping his company might have those answers.”_

_“Well, kid,” Slade said and gave her a cocky smirk, the kind she hadn’t seen cross his face since before the Mirakuru, “let’s go get your answers.”_

\--

“Sorry for running off with this,” Olivia says. Thea’s laptop is in her hands, laid out like a peace offering. 

“Are you going to tell me what was up with that?” Thea asks, accepting the computer with one eyebrow raised. “You were sure in a hurry.” 

“Someone decided to send me a message,” Olivia grinds out, which doesn’t really explain anything at all, “I…reacted.” 

“I’ll say.” 

“If anything comes out of it, I’ll let you know,” Ollie’s eyes drift off the side and she suddenly looks so sad Thea doesn’t know what to say, “just let me handle it, okay, Speedy?” 

“Okay,” Thea agrees numbly. “The name, was it..?” 

“…Yeah.” 

Thea fumbles a grin. “Cool name.” 

“It was.” Ollie sighs, scrambles for a change of subject. “How was your day with Mom?” 

And just like that Thea’s day is ruined again. She lets her lips twist with something bitter and angry. “Cut a little short.” 

Olivia frowns. “I thought you two were spending all day birthday shopping.” 

“Well yeah,” Thea mumbles, bitter venom coating every word, “that was _before_ she decided to run off and hook up with Tommy’s dad.” 

_“What!?”_

“Walter hasn’t even been gone for two months and she’s already sneaking around,” Thea rants and she’s almost shaking with the anger that has suddenly bloomed hot and acrid in her veins. “This is _so_ like her she did the _exact same thing_ before you and dad disappeared.” 

“Thea, what are you talking about?” 

“Mom! She’s a liar, and a cheat,” Thea bit off. “She cheated on Dad and now she’s cheating on Walter! She wants you to think she’s perfect but she’s _not_ , Ollie!” 

“I understand you’re hurt,” Olivia says, voice strained, “but can we hold off on the accusations, please? We really don’t have any proof.” 

“I saw them together!” 

“And I’m not saying you didn’t, Thea,” Olivia says gently, reaching out to place a comforting hand on her sister’s shoulder, “but maybe, there’s some kind of explanation, or…”

“Just because you want there to be an explanation, Ollie,” Thea snaps, shrugging off Olivia’s failure of a placating gesture, “doesn’t mean there is.” 

\--

_Olivia hadn’t told Slade much about her family, though to be fair he had said even less about his own. He’d managed to piece together enough: rich parents, one sister quite a bit younger. It wasn’t enough to tell him why exactly Olivia wanted to break in to her family’s company, but he’d decided he didn’t need to know. If the kid wanted to tell him, she would. In the meantime, he was more than willing to oblige her._

_They decided to treat infiltrating Queen Consolidated exactly like any other mission they handled for ARGUS, which meant full gear and full offensive._

_Tracking and capturing one of the company’s upper management for interrogation didn’t take long, especially since Olivia had done most of the groundwork before she’d even approached her partner with the idea. As Slade had predicted, Olivia’s Russian had gotten scarily good quite quickly, and the sharp syllables sliding off her tongue during questioning made her come across as lovely and lethal in turns. Olivia, he marveled, had come a long way from that bratty kid he’d trained._

_In less than an hour Olivia was looking at the contents of a memo her father had made not long before the Gambit’s departure._

_Slade knelt close beside her, the metal of his mask brushing against the fabric of her hood. He placed one gloved hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked._

_“Yeah,” she breathed, “I think so.”_

\--

“She thinks I’m _what?_ ” 

“That you and Mister Merlyn are having an affair,” Olivia repeats, settling down in an armchair. Her ankles are starting to ache. 

“Why would she think that?” Moira asks, voice wounded as she practically paces the length of the lounge. 

“I don’t know.” Olivia shakes her head. “She seemed to think this has happened before..?” 

“What? But—!” Moira pauses, releases a long sigh that makes her shoulders sag. “Of course, the fighting.” 

“Fighting?” 

“Before the Gambit went down, your father and I had some…arguments. Robert was…unfaithful to me, repeatedly,” Moira reveals. 

Olivia takes in a sharp breath. It hurts, of course it does, but it’s not really all that much of a surprise. Olivia has long since come to terms with the fact her father was not who she thought he was. This is just another facet of him she never knew about. 

“I know you thought the world of him,” Moira goes on, “but that’s how I wanted you to remember him. That’s how I want Thea to remember him.” She meets Olivia’s gaze, eyes bright and unflinching and impossibly cold. “I want you to keep this between us.” 

Olivia puts a hand on her belly, winces when her son kicks at her palm. She can certainly understand keeping secrets for the sake of protecting family, but something about this situation pulls at her, leaves an unsettling tingle in the base of her spine. “Of course.” 

Moira looks almost relieved. “Thank you. When you have children of your own…you’ll understand.” 

Olivia hesitates. “You haven’t…seen him, lately, have you? Mister Merlyn?” 

“Olivia,” Moira says with all the exasperation of a beleaguered mother and while Olivia wonders if she’ll end up sounding like that one day soon something about it sounds put-upon, false, “he’s the owner of a hugely successful global corporation and I’m the newly-minted CEO of a company, so yes, I occasionally go in and ask for advice.” 

The words sound reasonable, or something like it, and Olivia wants so badly to believe them. But there is an underlying current of wrongness to her mother’s tone, a panic so plain that if it had belonged to anyone else Olivia would already be in uniform and picking it apart with her arrows. As it stands, Olivia gets the feeling she’s just been fed a bald-faced lie. 

For now, she’ll swallow it down, no matter how sour it tastes. Olivia isn’t convinced Moira did cheat. But she’s also not convinced her mother isn’t hiding something far worse. 

\--

_The call from Waller came a scant few hours after Olivia got her hands on the information from Queen Consolidated, just as Slade and Olivia made it back to their hotel room._

_“I thought I told you not to go near Queen Consolidated, Miss Queen,” Waller said, jumping straight to business. Her voice through the speaker sounded oddly unfazed._

_“You suggested it,” Olivia reminded her. “You shouldn’t concern yourself. No one saw me.”_

_“Good,” Waller said succinctly before moving on, “you’re relocating. We have a new job for the two of you. Depending on your success, ARGUS is willing to consider it your last one.”_

_“And what did ARGUS have in mind?” Slade growled._

_Waller’s smile was practically audible in her voice. “Pack your bags, Mister Wilson. This next assignment is going to take you a little bit closer to home.”_

\--

“Miss Queen,” Amanda Waller greets, her voice and manner as cool and collected as they’ve ever been, and utterly unsurprised to see a vigilante on maternity leave in her office, “congratulations.” 

“If you wanted to get my attention, Amanda,” Olivia growls, “there are better ways to go about it.” 

“I’m sure. And when can we expect the fourth member of the Wilson progeny to grace us with his presence?” 

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” 

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Waller asks, eyebrow raised. 

“Does it matter?” Olivia hisses. “You owe me, Amanda. Do me a favor and stay away from my family.” 

“I have no intention of going near your family,” Amanda dismisses. Olivia is not reassured. “Just be aware that we will be…keeping an eye out, so to speak.” 

“I know why you think you need to ‘keep an eye out,’” Olivia snaps, eyes hard, “and I don’t appreciate it.” 

“Funny. You make it sound like you have a choice.” 

\--

Thea probably shouldn’t be driving right now. But she doesn’t really care.

Olivia’s being secretive again, barely stopping by Thea’s eighteenth birthday party to say hello, not to mention taking Mom’s side during their argument. Then, of course, she’d caught her Mom and Mister Merlyn getting all cozy and gross on the balcony.

That had been the last straw. So she took the venom green pills in her purse, the keys to her new convertible, and ran.

Her friends were right. She does feel floaty, like the world’s been turned on its side and she doesn’t have to care anymore about her cheating mother and missing stepfather and sad sister and dead dad. She feels like she’s dropped off the planet’s surface and gone gliding past the moon. She feels free. She feels _good._

She feels less good when her car goes careening off the side of the road. 


End file.
